The Pursuer

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Accession No. If rr.

THE PURSUER

Books by Louis Golding

NOVELS

FORWARD FROM BABYLON
SEACOAST OF BOHEMIA
DAY OF ATONEMENT
STORE OF LADIES
THE MIRACLE BOY
THE PRINCE OR SOMEBODY
GIVE UP YOUR LOVERS
MAGNOLIA STREET
FIVE SILVER DAUGHTERS
THE CAMBERWELL BEAUTY

SHORT STORIES
THE DOOMINGTON WANDERER

VERSE

SORROW OF WAR
SHEPHERD SINGING RAGTIME
PROPHET OR FOOL

TRAVEL

SUNWARD; ADVENTURES IN ITALY
SICILIAN NOON

THOSE ANCIENT LANDS: A JOURNEY
TO PALESTINE

BELLES LETTRES

ADVENTURES IN LIVING DANGEROUSLY
JAMES JOYCE

THE PURSUER

by

LOUIS GOLDING

LONDON

VICTOR ’GOLLANCZ LTD

First published January 6th igsF
Second impression January 6th ig$6
Third impression February igg6
Fourth impression {first cheap edition) February iggy

Printed in Great Britain by

The Camelot Press Ltd., London and Southampton

CHAPTER I

I

Wjiat is he running after me for? Harry Wace
asked of himself. What have I done to him ? I’ve
never seen him in my life before ! He’ll kill me if he
catches me !

Why doesn’t he stop? Why doesn’t he turn round
and bung me in the face ? the other small boy asked
of himself. Then I’d bung him in the face. Then we
could play together in the croft and find new oceans and
mountains together.

The breath of the pursuer was hot on the neck
of the pursued. Why doesn’t he catch me ? asked
Harry Wace in his anguish. It hurts me. I can’t go
kny more. If he’d catch me, he’d hit me. And then he’d
stop hitting me.

If I put my hand out I could catch him by his coat,
gloated the other small boy. But I won’t. Let him
turn round and bung me in the face. Besides, it’s fun.

There were other small boys than these two
running down Blenheim Road towards Bridge-
ways, four in the group of the pursuers, three

8

THE PURSUER

in the group of the pursued. Pursuers and pur-
sued had never set eyes on each other before.
The pursued were pupils of the Blenheim Road
Elementary School. It was an up-to-date school.
They had a big room specially fitted up for wood-
work. No other school in the neighbourhood
had one. They were rather objectionable about
it.

The pursuing boys came from a school about
a mile away up the Blenheim Road, in Longton.
They were a better class of boys, their fathers
were clerks and artisans. But they had no wood-
work room. As soon as they went up into Standard
Seven, they had to make an excursion every
Friday morning to do an hour’s woodwork in
the Blenheim Road School. They did not like it.
The boys of the Blenheim Road neighbourhood
were shabby and not many of them wore collars.
It was a slum, in fact.

The Longton boys usually went back in a body
after the woodwork hour. If they did not, some-
times there were fights. It was a new bafch of
boys who had come down to Blenheim Road
this particular morning. Most of them were glad
to get back to the heights of Longton, in fact
most of them had already gone. But Sidney
Sharpies hung about. He was alert and interested.
It interested him that the gravel of the playground
was not like the gravel up at Longton. The red

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9

brick was redder. He liked faces, too. It was only
a penny tram-ride or ten minutes’ walk down the
hill from his own home, yet the faces round here
were different.

There was a boy about Sharpies’s age leaning
up against the playground wall. He was about
eleven, too. He had a rather pale, heavy face,
and brown-gold hair, the fringe of which escaped
untidily under the peak. Sidney Sharpies’s hair
was black and smooth and carefully brushed.
The boy with the brown-gold hair was in no
hurry to get back to his dinner. Perhaps he hadn’t
much of a dinner to get back to. He just stood
against the wall and did nothing. His eyes were
grey ^nd didn’t seem to be looking at anything
at all.

Sharpies liked his face. He had never seen a face
like it before. He would like to talk to the boy,
but it wasn’t easy somehow. The boy was all
wrapped round in being by himself, like a great
big towel. Perhaps the boy would think he was
being clever and sniffy, because they were
dressed so different, Sidney Sharpies with a
beautiful blue silk bow to his waterproof collar
and a lovely shine to his boots, and the boy with
no bow or tie at all, and big holes in his toe-caps.

It would have been different if the boy had
been a girl. Sidney knew how to tackle girls.
He would have gone up to her and said “ Hello ! ”

lO

THE PURSUER

and she would have had to say “ Hello ! ”
back at him. Girls couldn’t help it. Then he would
have said : “ Let’s go for a walk in Victoria Park
this evening,” and she would have been there.

But it couldn’t be like that with this chap.
He felt a little flicker of anger shoot in his heart.
What right had he to hold himself to himself
like that as if he was somebody ? Who was he,
after all ? A little slum-boy from Blenheim Road,
with holes in his toe-caps. Probably his father
was a dustman or a hawker or something.

The boy still looked in front of him, still saying
nothing, seeing nothing. Then Sidney Sharpies
smiled at him, remembering that his father
and mother could withstand him when he
stamped and raged, but rarely withheld anything
when he looked up from under his lashes and
smiled with his green eyes. Several seconds passed
by thus. Then at length an awareness came into
the eyes and posture of the boy leaning against
the wall, an awareness that he was not wholly
alone in the world. The eyes saw the eyes that
were smiling into them. In the heart of the boy
leaning against the wall, a flicker of anger rose,
too, a resentment against this intolerable in-
vasion. What does he want, eh ? One of those
swanks from Longton. Just because he’s got all
swank clothes on, he thinks he’s everybody,
does he ? Well, he isn’t, that’s all.

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II

The anger died down almost at once. The un-
moving eyes, the unchanging smile, did nothing
to keep it burning. A profound embarrassment
took possession of Harry Wace. He blushed to his
ears, then with all his power he took his limbs
in charge. He shuffled away, his feet crunching
across the gravel of the playground. He reached
the gate that gave on the Blenheim Road
and so turned his face down towards Bridgeways,
and home. He was glad to come up with two
other Blenheim Road boys of his class about
fifty yards from the school. He felt a funny
shiver up his arms, as if he were frightened.
But what had he to be frightened of? Certainly
not that fellow from Longton with the blue silk
bow. He was bigger than him, anyway, he could
bung his face in, if he wanted to.

“ Hello,” said Harry Wace to the two others.

“ Hello, Wace ! ” they replied.

“ Hello ! ” he said again. The three walked
on. A minute or so passed. One of the boys told
the others he had now got two pocket-knives,
one had a cork-screw in it, the other hadn’t.
He was prepared to swop the one without a
cork-screw. What had the others which might
be set against it ? He was not interested in tram-
tickets, but he might consider cigarette-cards . . .
to be going on with.

The transaction did not have time to go far.

12

THE PURSUER

Suddenly the three boys heard a whoop of de-
fiance and hatred behind them. They turned.
Four Longton boys were coming down upon
them, shaking their fists and hallooing, con-
fident in their superiority of numbers. To two
of the three Blenheim Road boys the four Long-
ton faces were unfamiliar. To the third one only
was familiar, the face of the boy with a blue
silk bow, the one who had smiled at him. He
was smiling at him now. The smile seemed to
say : “ Hi, you, let’s have a game ! You run a
bit, run as long as you like, then turn round
and we’ll biff each other. It’ll be such a lark ! ”

The boy named Wace turned from the green
eyes. His heart was icy with fear. He lifted his
feet and ran, as if a devil were after him. The two
other boys, who might have stood their ground,
turned tail, too, when they found that one of their
number was already running. The chase was still
on by the time the two groups had reached the
bottom of Blenheim Road, where it debouches
into Doomington Road. Two of the Blenheim
Road boys turned sharp right, with three of the
four Longton boys after them. A moment later
they had turned on their pursuers, emboldened
by the knowledge that they were in their own
home lands, and the others were aliens. They
gave a good account of themselves.

But the boy named Wace ran and ran, with the

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13

boy Sharpies two or three yards behind him,
never more, just now and again less, so that it
seemed to Wace he felt the hot breath of the
pursuer lick his neck like fire. He lived in Horn-
beam Street, six or seven streets away. He would
never be able to get there. His heart was thump-
ing up behind his neck and choking him.

Then he became aware that only a little
distance away was the Post Office. He saw the
big red pillar-box by the pavement. There were
two lovely ladies who kept the Post Office. They
were sisters and not married, but they had big
soft bosoms. Whenever he went in to buy a stamp
for his mother’s weekly letter to Australia, they
always smiled at him kindly, because they knew
he was shy and slow, not like other boys. They
wore pink silk blouses and had golden hair
piled up on top.

There was this corner, and then the stieet-
crossing, and then the next corner. Oh, could he
reach as far ? Faster, faster ! The other one would
never dare to come into the Post Office after him,
for the Post Office belonged to the King. He was
over the street-crossing ! He was here ! He was
at the Post Office ! He turned on his left hand,
and threw himself up against the three steps. His
knee-joints would not work ; but, somehow,
though his legs were stiff as pokers, he found
himself on the top step. He reached to the latch

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14

of the door and pressed it. He heard the bell
tinkle above the lintel. He had never heard any
sound as glad before. He placed one foot across
the threshold, then turned and stared back at the
pursuer. The other stood below the steps, watch-
ing him with amused eyes. They looked into
each other’s eyes, as they were to do all their
lives long, across a gulf of silence and hatred, of
contempt and heartache, as they were to do across
the leaves of the books they studied, the figures
in their ledgers, the features of the women they
wed, across distances minute and enormous,
until even the sidereal distance of death was to
shrink to a hand’s span in the intensity of that
contemplation.

Then Harry Wace lowered his eyes. He shivered
as if a stick of ice had been laid under his shoulder-
blades. He staggered into the shop and almost
toppled against the counter.

“ Why, young man, whatever is the matter
with you ? ” asked one of the postmistresses, the
shorter and stouter one.

“ You poor boy, you’re shaking like a leaf,”
said the other, who wore pince-nez, but her
voice belied them.

Harry tried to speak, but could not, and did
not know what words he would have spoken.

“ The boy’s as white as a sheet,” said the
shorter postmistress. “ What have you been

THE PURSUER I5

running for? Has anybody been running after
you ? ”

He still said nothing. He stood against the
counter, his mouth trembling, his eyes large with
fear.

“ You poor thing ! ” said the shorter post-
mistress. “ Oh, you poor thing ! ” She lifted the
flap between the end of the counter and the wall
and came round to him. She put her arm round
his shoulder and patted him. “ There now, there !
Was it one of the boys ? Fve a good mind to write
and tell the headmaster ! ”

Then suddenly Wace found himself speaking.
“ It wasn’t anybody ! ” he cried passionately.
“ I was just running ! ” He threw the woman’s
arm off his shoulder.

“ What ? ” she cried, blushing with embarrass-
ment. Her voice was sharp. She opened her
lips and might have said something quite harsh,
when she heard her sister tapping with a coin on
the counter. “ No ! ” her sister’s lips went.
“ No ! ” “ Oh, yes, I see ! ” her own lips went.
It was clear to them both they were on the edge
of a mystery beyond their talents to fathom.
They were females and spinsters. “ Very well,
then ! ” she said aloud. She went back behind
the counter.

“ Can I get you anything ? ” asked the post-
mistress with the pince-nez.

l6 THE PURSUER

“ A penny stamp, please,” said Wace. He felt
too ashamed of himself to lift his eyes from the
ground. His ears burned dull red.

“ One penny, please 1 ”

He felt in his pockets, from trouser to jacket,
from jacket to trouser again. “ I — Fm sorry,”
he mumbled. “ I forgot to bring my penny.”

“ Perhaps,” said the shorter postmistress,
“ you’ll bring it in later, on your way back to
school.”

“ Yes,” said the boy. He went to the door and
hesitated.

“ It looks like rain,” said the postmistress with
the pince-nez, without lifting her head from her
sheets of stamps. There was not a cloud in the
sky. “ Perhaps you’d like to wait for a few
minutes.”

“ Yes,” said Wace again. He turned to the
posters on the walls and studied them attentively.
Five minutes and ten minutes passed. It was
getting late. His mother would be wondering
what had happened to him.

The boy with the silk bow couldn’t be there
any more, could he ? And what if he was ? Yes,
what if he was ? He’d show him, A sudden wave
of anger flooded Harry Wace. He was as good
as that swank any day. He’d bash his face in,
that’s what he’d do. He strode over to the door
firmly.

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17

“ Good-afternoon, sonny,” said the two post-
mistresses. But he did not hear them. He thumped
down the three steps and looked round. The other
boy was nowhere about. It was as if there had
been no such boy at all. He shuffled heavily
onward towards the small dark house in Horn-
beam Street.

2

Sidney Sharpies took his cap off and hung it
neatly on the hall-stand, in the small house in
the bright Longton Street.

“ I was expecting you twenty minutes ago,”
said the boy’s mother. “ Your dinner’s cold.
Where have you been ? ”

“ I stayed on and had a nice long talk with the
teacher,” Sharpies said blandly. “ He’s such a
nice teacher.”

“ That may be as it is,” the mother grumbled.
“ I can’t have you late for your dinner.”

“ No, mummy, no. But he was such a really
awfully nice teacher.” The boy’s eyes twinkled
with remembered pleasure.

Bp

CHAPTER II

I

For the next three months Sidney
Sharpies made the journey from Longton to
Blenheim Road every Friday morning for the
woodwork lesson. The visitors came into contact
with their hosts twice, once during the brief
interval before the last hour of morning school,
and later, when morning school broke up.
Sometimes Harry Wace and Sidney Sharpies did
not see each other, more usually they did. They
were aware of each other though a multitude of
screaming boys surged between them. Not a word
passed between them. They never looked at each
other directly. But they were as aware of each
other as if no one but they themselves existed in
a playground as desolate as a waste heath.

There was a vacancy about the day, about the
whole week, if Friday morning came and went
and the two boys, for one reason or another, had
failed each other. If they did not see each other
during the first interval, they would hang about
till morning school was over, until it was quite
certain that the one or the other was missing that

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19

day. Neither made an effort to find out who the
other was. The name of the one was never uttered
by the lips of the other. But they listened. Each
found out who the other was, Sidney Sharpies,
Harry Wace. Slowly another item and another
item added itself to their knowledge. Sidney’s
father was an insurance agent, Harry’s father
worked in a wire factory. Both boys ranked high
in the respective Standards Seven of their schools.
It was intended that both boys should go in for
scholarships to take them to the Doomington
Central School. The months went by. Not a word
passed between them.

Oh, you fool, you fool ! So the words arranged
themselves in the thoughts of Sidney Sharpies.
We could be such pals ! I’d fight you, Vd have to bust
your face in, so as to stop you looking so frightened. And
then when you weren’t frightened, we’d be such pals.

What did you run after me for ? the words made in
the thoughts of Harry Wace. What had I done to
you ? I hate you ! I wish I could kill you ! Just because
you wear clean collars and your stockings always stick up.
And what if I do wear the same sweater so’s nobody
should see my shirt’s torn ? I can’t help it ! I hate you I
Oh it might have been such fun going out all along the
river together to where the fields are and there’s blue-
bells ! I hate the grease on your hair ! It makes me sick !

20 THE PURSUER

After three months Sidney Sharpies did not
come down any more on Friday morninjgs for
the woodwork lesson in Blenheim Road. One
Friday morning and another went by and still
he did not come.

“ What’s happened to him ? ” Harry Wace
asked himself fiercely. “ Won’t he come any
more ? Is he ill ? Is he dead ? ”

A fierce temptation assailed the boy. He would
ask what had happened to Sharpies. What was
wrong with that ? Nothing at all. Nothing at all.
“ What’s happened to that kid from your school —
what’s-his-name, Sharpies ? ”

But he did not. A. taboo, august and mysterious,
arrested the words on his lips. He did not see
Sidney Sharpies a third and a fourth Friday
morning.

“ Isn’t it grand,” Wace sang to himself, run-
ning home from school that noontime, “ I shall
never see him again ! He’s gone ! ” But he was
surly over his food. He ate hardly more than a
mouthful. “ What’s come over the lad ? ” his
mother asked herself “ He’s not himself at all
these days. Happen he’s met some bit of a girl.
Ah well, come quick and go quick ! Here now,
Harry, here ! Have this apple ! You won’t, won’t
you ? Well, you can go and bring up a bucket of
coal from the cellar, and quick, too ! ”

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21

It came at length to Wace’s ears, as casually as
all he knew about the other boy had come, that
Sidney Sharpies had been sent l3y his father to a
school on the further side of Longton. It was a
school you paid to go to. They taught French
there, and even the early lessons in the Via
Litina. From that school you had a real chance to
win a scholarship to the Doomington Grammar
School. It was pretty hopeless to think of winning
it without French. You did not actually need the
Latin till you got there.

Harry Wace had a book with an embossed blue
binding and gilt edges. It was called Illustrated
Europe and it had been given to him as a prize
for being best boy in Standard Five. He had also
a snake in a bottle and a pen-knife. He sold these
things, which were his greatest treasures, and
bought himself Chardenal’s French Grammar with
the proceeds. If they did not teach French at the
Blenheim Road School, he would teach it to
himself. They might laugh at him in Blenheim
Road, but it was his intention to sit for a scholar-
ship to the Doomington Grammar School, though
it had not been done from that school before.

Sidney Sharpies and Harry Wace sat down two
or three rows from each other, during the scholar-
ship examination for the Grammar School. They

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S2

were called up on the same day for the viva voce
examination in the High Master’s room.

As Sidney Sharpies came out, Harry Wace was
waiting to go in. Sharpies’s face was radiant. He
knew he had made a first-class impression on the
High Master. The High Master had been friendly,
almost jocular. He knew that no man so sensitive
as the High Master could have permitted himself
such amiability if he had not already decided the
issue. The scholarship was in his pocket.

He came out and saw Harry Wace waiting to
go in. He saw how terrified he was, his forehead
was quite clammy. “ Never mind, kid ! ” he
whispered. “ It’s easy ! Good luck ! ”

The boy from Blenheim Road turned, quite
startled. He had been in such a state of nerves
that he had had no eyes to see what boy it was
who had come out of the High Master’s room. He
could not see there was a hand stretched out to
him. He tried to shape a word but dared not. He
was so pierced by the kindness of the voice that
had addressed him, he was afraid if he tried to
speak at all he would break into tears. He turned
away from the friendly word and the proffered
hand.

The High Master’s clerk came out into the
corridor. “ Harry Wace ! ” he called out. “ Yes,
sir ! ” whispered Harry. He disappeared.

Black fury stormed up over the green eyes of

THE PURSUER 2 $

Sidney Sharpies. The lips, which were at all
times a little thin and hard, set malignantly.

ril show him, he whispered, Pll show him ! The
bloody little swine !

Sidney Sharpies was duly awarded the scholar-
ship. Harry Wace was not, he had made so un-
happy an impression on the High Master during
his viva voce. His French, too, had been doubtful.
The two boys did not set eyes on each other for
several months, not, in fact, until the day the
Michaelmas term started at the Grammar School,
and Sharpies began his career as a Grammar
School boy.

Sharpies wore a brand new school cap to go to
school with, a blue cap with green circles, crested
by an eagle. He had a brand new leather satchel
slung over his shoulder. But by the time the
school-day was over, the cap looked easy and
casual, the satchel looked battered and customary.
He was a debonair young man. He had the knack
of that sort of thing. Other boys after their first
day at school are anxious to go home and tell
their mothers what it has been like. He was not.
He elected to dawdle about, and to walk home
with a group of Bridgeways boys, whom he enter-
tained mightily though he was only a new boy.
For some reason he preferred not to take the

24 the pursuer

direct tram home by the upper route to Longton.

If he had, he would not have been at the corner
of Hornbeam Street in Bridgeways just at the
moment that Harry Wace reached there, on his
way home from the low elementary school in
Blenheim Road. Harry Wace would not have
seen him standing there, taking his ease with
mature young men in the Third and Fourth
Form, his cap raked jauntily over one eye. He
would not have been able to smile with honey
sweetness into the moody heavy-lidded eyes of
Harry Wace ... if he had taken the direct tram to
Longton.

Hour beyond hour after midnight, Harry Wace
still sat over the kitchen-table, acquiring French
verbs and more French verbs. He ignored the
hollow chuckling of the broken incandescent
mantle and the shining parade of black beetles
along the wainscotting. “ Naitre ni,” he moaned,
“ acquSrir, acquis.

Harry Wace was elected to a scholarship at the
Grammar School on the results of the next
examination. He had not gained self-confidence,
but his book-learning was formidable for a boy of
his age. He entered the Modern Side, for he had
no feeling for the airs and graces of a classical
education. Sidney Sharpies was on the Classical

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25

Side. The two boys had no contact at all with
each other for a long stretch of time, excepting
on Harry’s first day ; though you could hardly
call a contact something so unsubstantial as a jerk
of the head and a thrust of the thumb,

Harry Wace was a new boy. It was a despicable
thing to be, he knew ; he knew that the condition
exacted odious sanctions. He moved about from
class to class dim as a mouse, hoping he might
avoid them in his pitiable obscurity. He had
safely survived every interval. The day’s end came
at length. He was on his way to the cloakroom
in the basement when a gang whooped by him
suddenly. His heart stopped beating. It was clear
that they were on the look-out for some forlorn
new boy, to submit him to the beastly initiations.
The gang had gone by him twenty or thirty yards.
His heart beat again. He had not been noticed.
Then the gang turned round on its tracks.
Another boy had come up amongst them from
behind. Wace saw with desperate clearness the
thrust of the boy’s thumb towards him and the
jerk of his head. Then the boy disappeared again,
a boy he knew well, and did not know at all.
The gang duly frog-marched him off to the lava-
tory, held his head in a basin till his lungs split
for air, twisted his elbow under itself, and uttered
the formula of mine dimittis. He was a new boy no
longer.

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26

The pulses beat in Wace’s ear-drums as they
held him under the water. He thought they
would wrench the arm out of the socket. But he
felt an emotion deeper and more abiding than
pain. He did not cry out because of the ease it
established in his heart.

ril get my own back, some day, Mr. Sharpies. Tov^ll
he sorry for this, I think.

2

There was no public rivalry between the two
boys. They did not come into contact with each
other either in work or play. Their names were
never associated with each other in any context,
excepting when they attained their respective
Sixth Forms, and then only casually. Yet they
maintained an unsleeping watch upon each other,
from day to day, from term to term. Each was
the ruthless tyrant of the other’s energies and
existence.

Sharpies had been considered advanced enough
to go into the Classical Third, among boys older
than himself. Wace was put into the Modern
Second, for fear that competition with boys older
than himself would fluster him. He worked so
hard, that when the next year’s remove came
round, he was promoted to a form on the Modern
Side that corresponded with Sharpies’s on the

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27

Classical Side. In his second year he set to work
secretly and won a middle school language prize.
As soon as the result was announced, Sharpies got
down to it and went one better, he won two
prizes, for Latin prose and English verse. Wace
was discovered by his form captain to be a useful
cross-country runner. Sharpies blazed into promi-
nence as a hundred yards and a two-twenty yards
sprinter. Wace hoped his weight would qualify
him for his form football team. His feet were just
too clumsy. Sharpies went down to the nets a
few Saturday mornings and they found him smart
enough to play for his form cricket team. He
might have played for the School First Eleven,
excepting that his indolence got the better of him,
and he refused to turn up to practise.

So the implacable rivalry continued through-
out their school-days, the barbs all the more
deadly because no one else than themselves saw
or heard them as they twanged through the air.
They hated each other, with a hatred that even
at its most inexorable involved elements that in
another conjunction might have blossomed into
opposite passions as fanatical. It was a hatred
that to each had an awful sanctity. It would be a
profanation if any other minds than theirs had
any cognisance of it. It had its own dreadful
honour, and exacted that no lips should for any
reason couple their names. There was therefore

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28

a point up to which the persecutions of the one,
the retaliations of the other might go, but no
further than that. If Sharpies turned up at the
Upper School Debating Society because he knew
that Wace was going to support the motion, he
might attack him with grinning ferocity, but only
on the condition that three or four other speakers
were attacked as ferociously, so that it might
seem an attack on an idea rather than upon a
particular person. There would be innuendoes
enough to flood Wace’s heart with fury, but none
saving those two were aware of them, and none
but those two would savour the full significance
of Wace’s polemic in the next issue of the school
magazine.

They were conscious of each other’s doings
with a spontaneity more terrible than that of
lovers, gifted with a faculty of building up in-
volved and accurate conclusions from perfunctory
indications, a faculty that belonged inherently to
Sharpies’s make-up but in Wace operated in one
direction only and with one objective. It was the
operation of this faculty that gave Wace one of
his few satisfactions.

He withdrew into the doorway of a shuttered
shop. It was the only shop in the small and dread-
ful street. The other houses had wares to sell, but
they did not expose them in shop-windows. He
had time to wait, but he did not think he would

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29

have to wait long ; perhaps half an hour, at most.
He did not need to wait more than ten minutes.
The door opened and released upon the sordid
air a cracked female cackle. It released Sidney
Sharpies, too. Sharpies almost fell down the
steps, so intense was the fury of his disgust and
humiliation. He was sickened by a twofold failure,
each more galling than the other. Harry Wace in
his doorway could almost persuade himself he
felt the heat of the shame of Sharpies’s cheeks,
across the black cobbles.

Sidney Sharpies strode away. A clammy sweat
was on his forehead. He fumbled for his handker-
chief, and as he brought it out, he brought out
with it his prefect’s cap, which he had thrust out
of sight the moment he had first slunk round into
the street. The cap fell on to the pavement. He
had been pleased about his cap. He had been
awarded it this term and Wace had not. Wace
might not get it for a term or two, or might miss
it altogether.

Harry Wace strode swiftly out of the shadow
and across the street and retrieved the cap. He
made an uncertain movement towards the other
youth. Then he stopped short where he stood.
He allowed the other to disappear, and then
came out himself into the main road. Next day
he sent the cap on in a small parcel from the
Bridgeways Post Office to Sharpies’s home

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30

address. The parcel contained no covering word,
of course. It needed none.

3

Harry Wace never achieved popularity either
as a boy or a man. He was morbid and a little
sullen. He was always on the defensive. He looked
as if he were afraid of something. Now and
again he would suddenly twist his head round,
as if he had just heard a footstep come up behind
him. He was acutely disappointed in his failure
among his fellows. He tried spasmodically to
let it be seen he would like to be liked by them,
and to like them in return. But he was clumsy
in his advances. It was thought he was throwing
his weight about.

Sidney Sharpies achieved popularity despite
himself. He was insolent, selfish and a bit of a
bully. But he had charm. Small boys adored him.
He played with his popularity as one plays with a
puppy. He made it do tricks and beg and stand
on its head. He knew who would be glumly
beholding the spectacle and digging his finger-
nails into the palms of his hands, in his misery
and frustration.

The last Speech Day came at length for Harry
Wace and Sidney Sharpies. They had finished
their school careers. Both had done well in school

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31

prizes and scholarships this final year. The school
was assembled in the Free Commercial Hall,
distinguished relatives on the platform, less
distinguished relatives in the galleries, the mul-
titude of boys in the body of the hall below.
School songs had been sung, the High Master
had read his report, the Bishop who was distri-
buting the prizes had duly announced that prizes
weren’t everything, and as for himself he had
always been at the bottom of the class.

The older boys now began to present themselves
for their prizes. One after another they enfiladed
before the senior masters, the High Master and
his Lordship. Each bowed stiffly or with exagger-
ated ease, then held out one hand for his leather-
bound prize and the other for the episcopal
hand-shake. For each according to the esteem
in which he was held by his fellows the cheers
and clapping and thumping of feet arose in the
body of the hall. When the name of Harry Wace
was announced, and the heavy-faced pale young
man shambled lumpily along the platform, even
the Bishop, man of the world though he was,
was embarrassed by the paralysis of silence that
fell upon the hall. The desultory half dozen
hand-claps that greeted him, or that were the
residue of the acclamation that had greeted his
predecessor, only emphasised the boy’s stony
failure. Wace had not reached the steps at the

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32

farther end of the platform by which he was to
descend into the body, of the hall again, when
another name was announced and another
young man presented himself to the verdict
of his fellows. A roar and a crash like a breaking
sea glorified Sidney Sharpies. He came forward
easily, his sleek black hair shining, his thin,
well-shaped mouth parted in a smile.

A moment’s faintness beset the heart of the
churchman on the platform. A quick cold gust
of wind seemed to strike along his temples.
“ What’s here ? ” a voice asked within him.
“ Oh, there’s trouble here ! ” But the green eyes
of the adored young man were upon him, the
amiable hand stretched out towards him. The
Bishop’s lips made the stereotyped phrase of
congratulation, though he knew it was wholly
inaudible in the unabated tempest. The young
man descended the steps into the hall, the thunder
still attending him. The young man and his
glory went in pursuit of the young man who had
gone before treading like a leper in his loneliness.

CHAPTER III

Sharples won a scholarship to Oxford,
Wace to the Technical Institute in Doomington.
They did not set eyes on each other for several
years. Or only once, at most. They did not cease
for one moment to be aware of each other.

Their hatred was indifferent to space as the
map measured it or time as the clock measured
it. They did not feel nearer or further from each
other because a hundred or two hundred miles
separated them for months at a time. There were
moments for Sidney Sharpies of infamous deso-
lation when he sat alone in his armchair in his
rooms in College, with the fire leaping in the
hearth and the other armchair empty on the
further side of the fire.

“ We might have both gone up to this place,”
mused Sharpies, “ mightn’t we ? I could have
seen you through. You just needed someone
to tell you the dodges. I know the dodges, all
of them, all the time. There’s only one dodge
I’ve never got the hang of. Oh why, why, were
you so filthy, so stupid ? Can you imagine what
it noight have been like, hunting for fritillaries

O

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34

in the meadows or tracing the white man on the
downs ? No, you can’t, of course you can’t,
you sow ! ”

And there were times when, as Harry Wace
came walking from Longton down the Blenheim
Road of an evening, it needed all he had of
self-control to prevent himself from breaking
into a sudden panic run, he had heard with
sudden and such dreadful clearness the sound
of feet running after him, and felt the pursuer’s
breath hot upon his neck.

“You can only go so far, and no further,”
his heart cried. “ You’ve gone far enough, I
warn you. I tell you. I’ll turn and strike ! Do
you hear ? I’ll upset the sleek hair for you and
twist the smile round to the other side of your
face ! You don’t believe me ? You’re right !
I’m a coward ! If I only hadn’t been a coward,
all these years . .

They were under the same roof only once
during their student days. A young man named
Tom Ormerod got married about this time.
He was a year or two older than Harry Wace
and had been his friend at school, so far as Wace
had had any friends. At the wedding-party there
was a lot of champagne flowing. Wace was not
used to champagne and took rather more than

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35

he could stand. He could not dance, either,
but before long he was dancing round with the
best of them. He was having a good time. He
could not remember when he had had such a
good time before. He knew exactly how clumsy
he was, but he had completely lost all self-con-
sciousness. He went clopping about merrily
on his big feet. He made jokes over his partner’s
shoulder. Everybody laughed. He knew some of
them were laughing because he was making a
fool of himself. He didn’t care a damn. He shouted
“ Ho ! ” at the top of his voice, seized his partner
by the waist, lunged off with her, and nearly
sent two other couples headlong.

Then Sidney Sharpies appeared on the scene.
He had come down from Oxford only that day.
He had learned in the train from some other
old Doomingtonian that Tom Ormerod was
getting married that same day. He knew that it
was more likely than not that Harry Wace would
be at the wedding-party, so he determined to turn
up.

He had not been invited, but that would be
all right. Tom Ormerod was not the sort of fellow
to resent an old school-mate coming along to
drink a spot of champagne to his bride’s health
and his own. He was quite right. Tom Ormerod
was delighted to see him, and even postponed
his disappearance from the party, because

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36

Sharpies brought so much zest into it. He told
jokes, he flirted with all the girls, he danced
divinely.

Harry Wace had been telling jokes, too, and
had been trying to dance. No one was aware
he was even in the room any longer. He hung
about for ten or fifteen minutes with no one,
not even the servants, taking any notice of him.
Their ears and eyes were elsewhere. Sidney
Sharpies was as much of an enchantment to the
men as to the women. Harry Wace slunk out
of the room at length. There was murder in his
heart.

CHAPTER IV

I

The two young men did well enough in
their respective academic careers ; after which
Sidney Sharpies went into business with a firm
of brokers in London and Harry Wace was put
on the research staff of a chemical products
firm in Doomington. Sharpies’s mother, who
was his sole surviving relative, went to live with
him in Highgate, where she died three or four
years later. Wace achieved a long-standing
ambition and managed to move his parents,
who were old and worn-out now, to a pleasant
little house in Withington, where there was a
garden. The old people pottered about in it
quite happily. They had a parlour, too. They
loved the parlour, with its yellow plush furniture
and green-and-gold plant-pots. They hoped
to see their boy married before they were dead
and done with. They made no great demands
on him. He would be able to keep them quite
nicely, even if he married, so long as she wasn’t
one of these nose-in-the-air, la-di-da bodies,
that wore low-cut evening dresses and wanted

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38

to be taken out weekly to dances and theatres.
But that wasn’t the sort of woman their boy
was likely to be taken up with, God bless him.
He would marry some nice respectable home-
keeping woman and they would see a grandchild
or two, as well, please the Lord, running about the
place, before their time was out.

And if Harry didn’t seem a bit the marrying
sort, well no harm done either. Mother was quite
capable of looking after him, as she always had
done. The old people looked forward to a serene
old age. It was not as serene as they had hoped.

Harry Wace was on the technical staff of the
chemical products firm, but his superiors discov-
ered that he possessed a business ability at least as
valuable to them as his technical knowledge. He
had never travelled anywhere, yet he displayed
a notable understanding of the economic condi-
tions and potentialities of out-of-the-way regions
in Europe and elsewhere. They began to discuss
with him the marketing of their processes, with
such useful results that he was ultimately trans-
ferred from the technical to the administrative
department. His employers were a shrewd cos-
mopolitan lot, Wace looked as blunt and simple
an Englishman as any man needs to. It was a
useful asset.

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39

Ultimately, they made him one of their premier
“ contacts ” men. In the first place, he knew
what he was talking about, from the process
and patents angle. Then he always let a client
get away with the comfortable feeling of having
made the best of the deal, a feeling for which
he paid heavily. And finally, and this was im-
portant, seeing that a good deal of the firm’s
trade was foreign, he had a first-rate command
of French and German, and a fair knowledge
of Spanish and Italian.

He was encouraged to give to his “ contacts ”
a social flavour, at least to his Latin “ contacts ” ;
these, more particularly the Spaniards, were not
convinced a deal was all it should be if the
negotiations at some stage or another had not
included a long discussion on art, women and
politics over a pot of coffee, a cigar and an
anisette.

It was in this way that he drank quite a great
deal of coffee and anisette, and smoked quite
a few cigars, with Senor Juan Bienvenida of
Barcelona, an agent of some importance in that
city, who made a practice of an annual visit to
Doomington. The lounge of the Winter Garden
at the Central Hotel was no gay substitute for
the sunny tumult of the Ramblas, but it served
its purpose. There was music, there were women
to look at.

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40

Bienvenida liked Wace. The two found they
did good business with each other. After a week
or so the Spaniard returned quite well-pleased
to his native country. On the occasion of their
third meeting things were not the same. A week
passed by and Bienvenida still lingered in Doom-
ington. The music and women of the Central
Hotel did not interest him. His thoughts were
elsewhere. Despite the coffee and cigars, the
relations between the Spaniard and the English-
man had been purely of a business nature.
Now Wace was a little embarrassed to find that
an almost pathetic friendliness was creeping into
the Spaniard’s attitude.

“ He’s got tied up with some woman in these
parts,” Wace reported to his superiors.

“ That will do nobody any harm,” was the
comment. “ See how much of that chemical
manure you can unload on him.”

“ There is something I wanted to tell you,”
said the Spaniard one day. “ That is, if I may
talk of a personal matter.”

“ I shall be honoured.”

“ I shall not be staying alone in this hotel when
I next come. That may be only a few months
from now.”

Wace did not quite know how to take the

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41

confidence. Was he expected to dig the other
fellow in the ribs for the gay dog that he was ?
He meant a woman, of course. But surely the
Spaniard could hardly consider himself intimate
enough with an English business acquaintance
half his age to let him know he was bringing
some picked-up woman with him ? He meant
his wife, of course.

“ I shall be happy to meet Senora Bienvenida,”
he ventured,

“ My wife is dead. I shall have my daughter
with me,”

“ Oh, indeed, I beg your pardon.” He won-
dered whether he might now change the subject.
It was not, after all, a matter of great moment
to him,

“ You must permit me to present you. I can
trust you, Mr. Wace. You are not like other
young men.”

It was not a very fortunate remark. It was even
an atrocious remark. Wace’s face remained
impassive. This was, after all, what his firm was
paying him for.

“ I shall be busy,” said the Spaniard awk-
wardly, “ I do not know how it will turn out.”
(“ fVAat will turn out ? ” Wace asked himself
impatiently.) “ Perhaps you could make time
to see her once or twice ? ” continued the
Spaniard.

42 THE PURSUER

Wace politely inclined his head.

“ You see,” the other went on. “ She is fond of
pictures. Her mother painted. Perhaps you might
take her to the Art Gallery. Oh, no. That would
be during the day. How could I ask such a
thing ? ”

The situation was getting quite awkward.
“ I am fond of pictures, too,” Wace murmured.
That did not seem to commit him too far, though
it was not true. He was not at all sure that this
was, in fact, what his firm was paying him for,
that he should act as nurse-chaperon to a young
Spanish blue-stocking while her father carried
on some nasty little intrigue.

“ Oh, did I say,” the Spaniard asked heavily,
“ that my daughter speaks English ? Her mother,
too, was English.”

“ I’m not sure you did,” Wace said. (Her
mother, too. Obviously, the fellow liked his
women English.)

“ You will not need to bite off the end of your
tongue, talking my language,” continued Bien-
venida, trying to strike a lighter note. “ She
has an aunt and uncle in London, the aunt is
her mother’s sister. But they are old people.
It would be dull for her to stay with them all the
time.”

“ I am sure that Senorita Bienvenida will find
a good deal to occupy her in Doomington,”

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43

said Wace a little frigidly, frigidly enough to
make him realise he was doing rather less than
his employers expected of him. “ Permit me ! ”
He lifted his glass. “ Senor Bienvenida, to your
daughter ! ”

“ Manolita ! ” the father whispered. A mist
came over his large brown mournful eyes.

One morning several months later Wace was
summoned to the office of his chief. He was
informed that Senor Bienvenida had arrived
and had brought his daughter with him. They
were installed at the Central Hotel. Bienvenida
had come a number of months earlier than his
custom, because apparently it was his intention
this time to combine pleasure with business.
It had come to their ears, not from the Senor
himself, that there was a widow of some means
and ample charm who lived in Southport.
They had met, it was thought, in St. Jean-de-Luz
a couple of summers ago. Apparently he intended
to spend at least as much time this year in South-
port as in Doomington. The idea, probably,
was to see how the daughter and the prospective
wife took to each other.

That was as it might be. At all events, it was
thought by the directors that it would be good
policy to give a dinner-party in honour of their

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44

Spanish customer and his daughter. The Span-
iards were a formal people, and that was the sort
of attention they appreciated. Senor Bienvenida
had spoken appreciatively of young Wace, and
they proposed, therefore, to ask him to come,
too. It was just possible that the Senorita and the
lady from Southport might not on their first
meeting fall into each other’s arms. In that case,
the directors would not take it amiss if Mr. Wace
put himself out a little on the Senorita’s behalf.
It would be kind of him, as well as, to put it
bluntly, good business.

A week later the evening of the dinner-party
came round. Harry Wace could not remember
an occasion he had looked forward to with such
sullen displeasure. The party was held in the
house of one of the directors, in a rich Cheshire
suburb. The furniture was new and shiny and
expensive. Even the flowers looked a little vulgar
in their great new crystal vases. The crystal and
brass of the chandelier were so massive that the
whole contraption looked as if it might tear itself
loose from its grapplings and come down at any
moment.

The girl did not look up when her father
presented him to her. She put out a nerveless
hand and dropped it almost immediately.

THE PURSUER 45

“ Oh, my God ! ” said Wace to himself. “Look
what they’ve let me in for ! ”

The father moved away. Wace hung about
for a few moments, but the girl seemed to show
no intention of lifting her eyes. She seemed as
miserable as himself about the show. He won-
dered whether the kinder thing was to stay
and start some sort of a conversation or just
make himself scarce. She seemed quite young,
hardly more than a child, as she sat there playing
with her fingers and her head drooped towards
her chest. He could see the petulant thrust of
the lower lip.

Probably the poor creature was more embar-
rassed than anything else. He had talked enough
with Spaniards and Englishmen who had lived
in Spain to know how stickily Spanish girls were
brought up. They never moved out without a
chaperon, perhaps even two or three. Even the
most respectable restaurants were only respect-
able between certain hours ; at other hours they
were unthinkable. They never went to parties,
even in private houses, without a long and
anxious discussion beforehand as to whether the
escutcheon of both host and hostess was quite
irreproachable.

Of course she was embarrassed. The hostess
was quite unused to parties of this size and didn’t
know whether she was standing on her head or

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46

her heels. She had done nothing at all to make the
little foreign girl feel at home. So far from having
a chaperon or two to look after her, she had been
deliberately thrown at the head of a young man
who might well be a horrid libertine.

He stood there looking at her for some time.
“ Could I get you something to drink, Senorita ? ”
he brought out at length.

She lifted her head. The eyelids were drawn
back from her eyes. It had not occurred to him
to ask himself what her eyes were like under those
dropped eyelids. He had merely observed with-
out excitement that her skin was beautiful, with
the golden bloom of a peach. When her eyes fell
on his, he forgot to be sorry for her because she
was a little stranger without a chaperon. He
forgot the doleful father clearing the decks for
his courtship in Southport. He was aware only
of eyes larger and more limpid than any he had
seen before. They were not limpid. They were
lustrous. He felt a sudden weakness at the knees.

She disregarded his question. She attacked him
straight away, without any skirmish. He realised
his sympathy had been misplaced. She needed
no phalanx of chaperons before she dared emit
a faint word in a strange young man’s presence.

“ You’re the young man who is to take me to
see pictures ? ” she said. She spoke with hardly a
trace of an accent, with no more than the muting

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47

of the dentals. “ I hate pictures ! ” she informed
him, hitting the palm of her hand with her fist
for emphasis. She looked at him with some
savagery in her eye, as if it was he who was
responsible for the picture idea.

“ But so do I, so do I ! ” he hastened. His lips
trembled in the urgency of his repudiation. Her
mouth was a full bow. Three or four jet-black
ringlets clustered between her ear and her cheek-
bone.

“ Please get me some sherry,” she commanded.
“ If they have sweet sherry.”

They did not have sweet sherry. It seemed to
him a catastrophe of the gravest dimensions. “ I
am sorry,” he stated, “ I am sorry. I — er ”...
Then he completely forgot what he was sorry
about. The eyes were brown, with gold flecks in
them. Mountain pools are like that with the hot
sun striking on their surface through close-knit
branches.

She was smiling now. She was a creature who
combined a quality at once queerly childish with
something almost comically mature. The em-
barrassed and embarrassing Senorita, the diffi-
dent creature who had strayed out of purdah,
put her hand out and touched his fingers.

“ Then make them give me orangeade,” she
bade him. “ I often take it at home before
dinner.”

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48

There was some trouble about that, but he
got it for her. She sipped at it. Her lips were like
a bather hovering at the water’s edge. She lifted
her eyes towards him. He felt himself submerged
in them, with no bottom for his stretched feet
and the surface high above his head.

“ England isn’t Spain ! ” she brought out
suddenly. He said nothing. “ England isn’t
Spain ! ” she repeated. “ Is it or isn’t it ? ”

“ No ! I suppose not ! ”

“ I think in England I ought to be allowed
to choose a young man for myself, don’t
you ? ”

She was not being coy with him. He could
see that. It was a proposition she put up for his
dispassionate scrutiny.

“ Yes,” he said. “ Of course. I think it’s a
shame ”

“ Excuse me ! ” she started. Her mind was off
on another track.

“ Yes ? ”

“ Do you know what it’s all about ? ”

“ As a matter of fact, I have some idea ! ”

“ There you are ! ” she said bitterly. “ Is there
anyone who doesn’t know ! ”

“ I’m sorry ! ” he said.

“ It’s not your fault ! ” she insisted. Her mind
was moving quickly from point to point. “ She
was so lovely ! I loved her so much ! ”

THE PURSUER 49

He said nothing. He knew she was speaking of
her dead mother.

Her mind sped on again. Her eyes hardened,
“ I’ve met this other one. I’m not going to like
her. I’m not ! She’s not going to like me ! ”

He was full of distress, “ Oh, no ! ” he urged.
“ I do hope you’re going to be happy ! ” He
wondered if she could hear him. He could hardly
hear himself.

“ Do take me out ! ” she said suddenly. She
threw herself on his mercy. “ I like you ! I’m so
lonely here ! ”

There was a noise in his head like an orchestra
breaking into music. He did not know what to
say, or if either of them could hear him, with the
crashing of all those instruments.

“ Dinner is served ! ” decided the butler.

She was placed next to him. He ate hardly more
than a few mouthfuls throughout the meal. It
seemed to him he had never beheld any spectacle
more enchanting than the way she handled her
knife and fork and lifted a morsel of cutlet to her
lips. She attended to her food with absorbed
gravity ; and then, the instant a course was over,
she gave him her whole mind again.

He was in love, prostratingly in love. He had

always thought he was one of those whom love
Dp

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50

must pass by, for women either embarrassed or
bored him. This girl made every vein in his body
run like a spring-time stream. He seemed to
himself a defter, a more elegant, a more masterful
person. She listened to him attentively, opening
her large eyes. Her nose was a little tip-tilted. He
wanted to touch with his little finger the black
ringlets that clustered against her ear. He wanted
so violently to touch them that he was tongue-
tied for ten minutes.

“ What is the matter with you ? ” she asked.
“ Are you cross with me now ? ”

“ Oh, my God ! ” he said. “ I am not ! No,
I am not ! ”

He asked Senor Bienvenida if he might have
the honour of entertaining his daughter one day
next week, for an hour or two. Bienvenida’s next
engagement in Southport was for the following
Tuesday. It was arranged that Harry Wace
should entertain the Senorita the following
Tuesday. The absences in Southport became more
prolonged. Harry Wace and Manolita Bienvenida
saw increasingly more of each other during the
three weeks that elapsed before she went back to
her relatives in Kensington. He took her round
one day to see his parents. She was enchanted by
them and their little garden and their yellow

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51

plush furniture. They were a little frightened of
her. She was a foreigner, after all, and a lady,
rather disturbingly a lady. But they quite liked
her. She wondered when he would kiss her first.
But he merely sat fiddling with his fingers and
looking up into her eyes, minute upon minute.

“ Kiss me, you silly young man ! ” she said at
length. There was a note of real severity in her
voice. “ I did not know the English were so slow
as all that.”

He wrote to her every day when she and her
father left at last for Spain, and she wrote to
him almost as often. But after the second Senora
Bienvenida was added to the household in Barce-
lona, her letters got more and more unhappy. As
they became unhappier, they became scarcer.
He wrote and told her he was coming out to
Spain to deliver her from her wretchedness. He
received a wire to let him know she was coming
to England. It had been arranged she was to
stay with the Littlewoods, her mother’s relatives
in Kensington.

He went down to Dover to meet her, intending
to ask her to marry him. But the Littlewoods
were there, too, and he was unable to force the
opportunity. Two or three weeks later he paid a
formal visit to the house in Kensington. He was

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52

not an unwelcome visitor. The girl’s father had
written to say he did not disapprove of the
young man. Mrs. Littlewood welcomed the
thought that Manolita might make up for her
mother’s marrying a Spaniard by herself marry-
ing an Englishman.

With his knees knocking together in fright, he
asked Manolita Bienvenida would she be his wife.
She threw her arms about his neck. The words
gurgled from her throat like water into a marble
basin.

“ You fool ! What have I come to England for ?
Kiss me ! Oh, not like that ! Like this ! Like this !
Do you see now ? ”

CHAPTER V

1

The old students of the Doomington
Grammar School resident in London had an
annual reunion dinner in a restaurant in Holborn.
Sidney Sharpies was not a fanatical Old Dooming-
tonian, but he turned up at these gatherings
more often than not. He did not count on
meeting any old friend there whom he could not
more conveniently meet elsewhere during the
course of the year. He turned up because it was
a clearing-place for the year’s gossip. You learned
what had happened to your contemporaries,
whether they were judges by now in Borneo or
had stayed on in Doomington.

You learned in fact what there was to learn
about Harry Wace. You did not need to mention
his name. All you needed to do was to give the
conversation a dexterous little twist. And yet . . .
and yet . . . was it all just a little fatuous, perhaps ?
You sometimes wondered whether Harry Wace
was quite so preoccupied with you as you were
with Harry Wace. Was preoccupation the wrong
word ? Yes. It was something more and less

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54

than that. You could go for months on end with-
out once thinking of his name. And then suddenly
you found there was something with a sharp point
sticking straight into your lungs. You were
almost bent double with the pain of it, it was all
you could do to straighten yourself. You knew
what that something was. Oh, yes, you knew well
enough. Pretty mad, wasn’t it ?

This particular year something more substantial
than the name of Harry Wace presented itself
at the Old Doomingtonians’ annual dinner. It
was, in fact, Harry Wace himself. Sidney Sharpies
was late. Wace had apparently been there quite
a few minutes already, to judge from the gang of
people he had around him. There had never
once been half such a crowd in his neighbourhood
during all the fellow’s schooldays. They used to
shy away from him then, as if he wasn’t quite
clean.

He seemed quite happy, very happy, in fact,
thoroughly pleased with himself The devil take
him, who in hell did he think he was, standing
there, grinning from ear to ear ?

Sharpies moved up to the edge of the crowd.
He put himself in such a position that Wace
could not fail to see him. His lips tightened
grimly. That would be a nice eyeful for him.

Harry Wace turned as someone addressed him.
His eyes fell on the eyes of Sidney Sharpies. They

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55

hesitated there for a moment, no more than that,
as if he did not quite remember the name of the
fellow who stood on the edge of the crowd there.
Then they moved on.

It was preposterous. Surely, surely, the fellow
had not seen him. It was impossible that he should
have seen him ! What armour had the fellow
found to gird on about him, that he could
see him thus, and move his eyes indifferently
on ?

What ? What was this they were saying ? What ?
Congratulations, old man ! When’s the happy
day, old chap ? You gay old dog, you, I hear
she’s a Senorita, eh ? Carramba ! Give my love
to Carmen !

Sidney Sharpies turned away. For a moment it
seemed to him that the lamps in the room had
fused and all gone out. Then he realised the
darkness was in his eyes, at the back of the pupils
somewhere.

It was the impertinence that most astounded
him. How dare he ? He had not asked Sidney
Sharpies if he could go and get himself engaged,
had he ? How dare he do such a thing ?

A moment later, he realised how grotesque,
beyond the last boundary of farce, his thought
had been. He was aware only of a profound and
appalling loneliness. He had never known the
sensation before in such glacial acuteness.

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56

Oh, no, my friend ! You think you’re going to leave
me high and dry ? Oh, no, not so quick !

A foreigner, eh ! You’d need a foreigner to make you
feel you were almost as good as a human being, wouldn't
you ?

A Spaniard, they said, didn’t they, a Senorita ? Ho,
ho ! That will be very piquant. OU ! Oli !

2

The Old Doomingtonians themselves arranged
who their table-companions were to be during
their annual dinner. Sidney Sharpies took careful
note who the two young men were, sitting on either
side of Harry Wace. It was not at all a difficult
matter to arrange a little party for cards and
coffee one night at which both of these young
men were invited. He met only one of them
again, as an apparently casual question elicited
the fact that the other knew almost nothing of
Harry Wace’s affairs. From the first he learned
the name of the Spanish girl to whom Harry
Wace was engaged, and of the relatives in
Kensington with whom she was living. He found
after a consultation of directories that Mr.
Littlewood of such and such a street was an
antique-dealer. He had a fair general knowledge
of antiques and night and day for two or three

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57

weeks he applied himself to the study of one or
two special subjects. It was easy enough to
establish contact with Mr. Littlewood. He found
the old gentleman so agreeable and full of
knowledge that he could not forbear asking him
to see the few things he had himself picked
up here and there about the place. He found
Mr. Littlewood’s company not merely so enter-
taining but, frankly, so profitable, would not
Mr. Littlewood lunch with him at his club ?
Mr. Littlewood had rarely met a young man so
talented, yet so eager to learn. Would Mr.
Sharpies care to come in and have a spot of food
with them one night in Kensington ? He had
some eighteenth-century bronzes worth looking
at. Mrs. Littlewood would be delighted to meet
him. He had already spoken to her about him.
They had a Spanish girl staying with them, too,
a niece of his wife’s. A nice little thing.

3

When Sidney Sharpies first set eyes on Manolita
Bienvenida, it was not triumph he was conscious
of. Indeed the manipulation of the situation had
not been at all so difficult as it might have been.
He felt an insane desire to slap her face ; or,
even more, because she looked extraordinarily

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58

childish, to turn her over his knees and spank
her mercilessly. He was furious with her, and
unspeakably jealous. Only one person in the
world had ever resisted him. That person had
not resisted this thick-mouthed cow-eyed young
woman. She would see. She would not resist him.
Oh, no, she would not resist him.

None of these emotions showed in his smiling
green eyes. His manners, as ever, were enchant-
ing. He paid far more attention to Mrs. Little-
wood than to Manolita. He was a great success.

Excepting with Manolita. He did not stay late,
and she hung about after he left, long after her
usual bed-time. She seemed moody. She kept on
thumping the cushion behind her head, then
throwing it down, then picking it up and thump-
ing it into position again.

“ Whatever is the matter with you, child ? ”
asked Mrs. Littlewood. “ Don’t fidget so. Why
don’t you go to bed ? ”

Manolita pouted. She said nothing for a minute
or two. Then she spoke.

“ Is that young man coming again ? ” she asked
suddenly.

“ I don’t know. Why ? ” asked Mrs. Little-
wood. “ I suppose so.”

“ Don’t let him come again, please don’t ! ”
she brought out. There was a sharp note of
pleading in her voice.

THE PURSUER 59

“ Whatever is the girl talking about ? ” asked
Mrs. Littlewood.

“ Really, my dear,” said Mr. Littlewood.
“ What on earth do you say that for ? ”

“ I don’t like him ! ” she said. “ I don’t like
him ! ”

“ Whoever heard of such a thing ! ” said Mrs.
Littlewood. “ Such a charming young man !
After all, he didn’t come to stc you ! ”

“ Of course not ! I know ! I’m sorry ! ”

Mr. Littlewood was very ruffled. “ On my
word, Manolita, if you’re going to dictate to us
who’s going to come to the house and who isn’t,
on my word . . .” he rumbled. His cheeks were
quite flushed.

Her eyes filled with tears. “ Forgive me, uncle,
forgive me ! I’ve got a headache ! ”

“ Then you’ll go to bed at once,” requested
her aunt. “I’ll give you some aspirin to take up
to your room.”

“ Good night ! ”

“ Good night ! ”

4

When Sidney Sharpies asked the two Little-
woods and their niece to dinner in a pleasant
little restaurant in Soho, Manolita would have
liked to refuse. She did not at all know how

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6o

Harry would like the idea of his fiancee going out
to dinner with a young man, even though she
had her uncle and aunt with her. But she was so
conscious of her bad behaviour after Sharpies’s
first visit, she did not see how she could make
any trouble now. Her uncle and aunt were
obviously keen on the young man. She must do
her best to make herself agreeable.

Sharpies paid just a little more attention
to her this time than before, just a little, not
enough to alarm her, any more than she was
already alarmed by his grace and wit. She thor-
oughly enjoyed herself; so thoroughly, in fact,
that she found it just a little difficult to mention
the episode at all to her lover in her next letter.
It was, was it not, a matter of no importance.
She did not mention it.

5

Sidney Sharpies worked harder and more
delicately to captivate Manolita Bienvenida than
he had ever worked in his life before at anything
at all. He could not remember he had ever em-
barked on anything so exquisitely worth doing.
The Littlewoods still had not the faintest idea
that anything other than his friendship with old
Mr. Littlewood brought him down to their house

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6l

in Kensington. He was, of course, charming
with Manolita, though even yet she seemed not
entirely to have got rid of her initial dislike of
him. But then he was charming to everybody.
He could not fail to be charming.

One day he suggested to Manolita what a great
joke it would be if he took her out to tea alone,
without the older people being there. She
accepted the invitation, because it was impossible
to refuse him anything when he asked for it.
But she was in a state of fierce resentment against
him and herself by the time the day of their
meeting came round. She played with the idea
of not turning up, but finally decided she would.
He knew perfectly well she was engaged to a
young man in Doomington. What did he mean
by making a secret appointment with her ?
She determined to tell him exactly what she
thought of him. After that, she would simply
refuse to see him.

But it did not turn out like that. He was so
easy and pleasant, she did not know how to start
at him. He took away from the meeting any sense
that it might be mean and underhand. He
attempted no familiarity of any sort, no acciden-
tal grazing of knee against knee, of hand against
hand. It was all so agreeable she did not know
how to refuse an engagement to lunch ^with
him.

62

THE PURSUER

She did not know, either, how to mention
these meetings to Harry. She thought it best,
on the whole, that she should not.

When he first made love to her, as they sat
pressed close against each other, heart against
heart, mouth against mouth, she could not for-
bear from asking herself whether she had been
expecting this from the moment she set eyes on
him, or whether he had succeeded in betraying
her because of the immensity of her astonish-
ment. But the question had hardly more time
than to formulate itself. He was more masterly
in love than in his other accomplishments. “ Oh,
when, when,” she whispered through her tears,
“ when do we meet again ? ”

6

It was not many weeks later, and only a week
or two before the date fixed for his wedding,
that Harry Wace received an urgent wire from
the Littlewoods summoning him to Kensington.

He took the first train and presented himself.
Mr. and Mrs. Littlewood sat alone in their
drawing-room.

“ What is it ? ” he asked. “ Where’s
Manolita ? ”

“ I don’t know how to tell you,” whispered

THE PURSUER 63

Mrs. Littlewood. She dabbed her eyes with her
handkerchief.

“ Where’s Manolita ? ” he asked again.

“ Listen, Harry ! ” said Mr. Littlewood. He
came over to him and laid his hand on his
shoulder. “ We didn’t know what we’d best
do. We could hardly bring ourselves to write
and tell you. We thought you might want to do
something, go after her, try and reason with
her. So we thought it best to get you to come up
to town.”

“ When did she go ? Who with ? ”

“ A young broker, by the name of Sidney
Sharpies. He was at the same school as you.
He was probably about the same age. Do you
remember the name ? Poor old boy, I can’t tell
you how sorry we are.”

“ No, I don’t remember the name.”

“ If there’s anything we can do at all . . . you
see, in a way, we feel ourselves responsible.
If we hadn’t invited him here ”

“ Excuse me,” said Harry Wace. His face was
quite bloodless. His eyes were dead as soot.
He reached for his hat. His hand was quite firm.
“ I think I’ll just go out a bit and think this
over.”

Mrs. Littlewood made a movement as if to
rise from her chair. Her husband motioned
her to remain seated.

64 the pursuer

I must kill him. He wants me to kill him. There is
nothing else I can do.

7

Sidney Sharpies had had to work quickly.
He had no great margin of time at his disposal
before the date fixed for the wedding of Manolita
and Wace. It may have been his intention to
carry away the girl for a week in Paris, and then
finish with her. He would have adequately
soiled Wace’s linen for him in a week.

But a fresh series of considerations presented
themselves in Paris, of which the outcome was
that he decided, after all, to marry her. She was
a good-looking creature, better looking than
most. It seemed in some way a pity to slough her
like a glove after only a week’s wear. He knew
he could not retain her much longer than that
unless it was quite clear to her they were going
to get married. Moreover he realised she was
deeply attached to Wace. If she had not been,
there would have been no joy in detaching her.
He himself had fascinated her, he had hypnotised
her. He did not boggle at the words. But that
would wear off. He did not propose to expend
the considerable and continuous energy necessary
to maintain it at full pressure. He did not believe

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65

she had been in love with Wace, in the romantic
sense of the word, as without any shadow of
doubt Wace had been with her, (Here again,
had there been any shadow of doubt, the triumph
would have been less delicious.) The women of
Manolita’s country often fell in love with their
husbands after, rather than before their wed-
dings. He believed Manolita’s affection for Wace
would have mellowed into love soon enough,
if the sun had been allowed to shine on it. It
was wise, therefore, to prevent the wounded and
bedraggled bird from winging its hurt way to his
enemy’s bosom. He could imagine with what
unctuous benevolence Wace would spread his
forgiving wings to receive her. Oh, no. So touch-
ing a conclusion to the affair must be avoided at
all costs, at the cost, even, of attaching to him-
self for life this thoroughly bed-worthy young
woman.

And, of course, not necessarily for life, not
strictly.

Then this was his final argument. It alone
would have been effective, if the others had been
lacking. She felt like a little bit of Wace under
the same roof with him, behind a locked door
with him, in the same bed with him. He smiled.
When she opened her eyes on the pillow beside
him, the morning after their first night together,
she saw his green eyes smiling into her face,

Ep

66

THE PURSUER

and the thin lips parted, displaying the teeth a
little.

A shiver ran through her. Her shoulder was
bare. She lifted the bedclothes up to her eyes.
“ I feel cold, darling ! ” she said.

CHAPTER VI

Old Mr. and Mrs. Wage did not have so
serene an old age as they had hoped for. They
were not loquacious and they said as little as
possible to their son about his wicked betrayal
by the Spanish Jezebel. He had never been much
of a one for demanding or accepting sympathy.
But they could see he was taking it very badly.
Now and again the mother would place her hand
on the back of his head, where she knew the ache
came when things went wrong. The father might
ask him to go round and watch them playing
bowls at the little park not far away ; or to take
half a pint with him at the Golden Lion round
the corner. The old people did no more than that.
They were undemonstrative people.

One night they were awakened from their
sleep by a noise so loud and frightening it sounded
as if the place had been broken into by a gang
of toughs. Old Wace got up and fumbled about
for matches. “ Don’t go, John, don’t go ! ”
implored his wife. “ Our Harry’ll go ! It might
be someone'who’ll damage you ! ”

68

THE PURSUER

“ Our Harry won’t go ! ” said the old man.
“ He’s not come in yet ! At least if that’s not
him ! ” He struck a match and lighted his bedside
candle ; then he went out of the room, his night-
gown trailing to his feet.

The gas had been turned on full in the down-
stairs sitting-room. They usually left it on a
small jet when Harry had not yet come in.
Harry was standing near the fender, looking
down on the wreckage of a set of pot ornaments
that had decorated the mantelpiece. The mantel-
piece was quite bare now. The expression on his
face was very severe. It was as if someone else
had swept the mantelpiece bare, and Harry Wace
disapproved strongly of his behaviour. He stood
quite still, without the faintest suggestion of
unsteadiness. He was dead drunk, though a
stranger coming in would have not been aware
of it. His father, however, was well aware that
his cheeks were not usually so deathly pale and
that that dull glaze was usually absent from his
eyes.

“ Harry,” said the old man. “ Get to your
bed at once ! You’re drunk ! ”

Harry lifted his eyes towards his father, then
turned them away indifferently. The old man
shivered. He had never seen anyone so desolately
drunk before. Harry then went to a drawer in
the sideboard, and took out a chess-board and

THE PURSUER 69

a set of pieces. He arranged them and made a
few opening moves, on each side of the board.

“ Harry,” the old man said again. “ You must
come up ! You’re drunk ! You’ll do yourself
no good ! ”

This time the young man did not look up.
His mouth tightened uglily. The fingers of his
left hand fastened round a heavy vase on the
table, as if he would throw it if he were spoken
to again.

The old man shook his head. He went back
again to his wife mournfully.

“ He’s drunk ! ” he said. “ It’s like somebody
else, not like himself at all. He’s playing chess
with himself.”

“ He’ll do himself harm, John. Couldn’t
you get him to come up to his bed ? Shall I
try ? ”

“ He’s best left to himself, mother.”

“ It’s hard, John, it’s hard, and us getting on
so. I don’t remember him ever being the worse
for liquor before.”

“ It’s that whore ! Best shut your eyes and go
to sleep, mother.”

They heard him nearly an hour later come up
to his room. His feet did not seem in the least
unsteady. They were perhaps just a little more
deliberate than usual, tread by heavy tread.

70

THE PURSUER

His mother got up next morning to make his
breakfast. The chess-board and pieces had been
put neatly back into their drawer again. The
fragments of the mantelpiece ornaments still
littered the mat in front of the fender. She put
them out of sight.

“ Good morning, mother,” he said, as he came
in.

“ Good morning, Harry,” She was bending
over the kettle by the hob. She did not turn
round to greet him.

He stood a few minutes without saying a word.
Then he came a few paces forward into the
sitting-room.

“ Mother,” he said, “ Those ornaments are
gone from the mantelpiece.”

“ Yes,” she said. She still did not turn round.

“ I must have knocked them down,” he said
quietly. “ I’ll buy you a new set this evening when
I come back from the office.” He said no more
on the subject. The old people were too wretched
to refer to it. His head ached pestilently for
several days.

The same sort of thing occurred several times
during the next few months. He paid for it with
an outrageous headache each time, but it was

THE PURSUER 7I

not much to pay for the purchase of so many
hours of complete oblivion.

His mother once tried to remonstrate with him.
He told her he would get drunk when he chose.
If she preferred him to go to live elsewhere,
he would go to live elsewhere. She did not remon-
strate again. But there was no sleep for either of
the old people those nights till they had heard
him go to his room and his door close behind
him. Then, too, it was hours before they closed
their eyes.

And then one night he did not return at all.
They were awake all night, shaking with fear
lest he had done some dreadful thing in his
drunkenness.

He came in with a woman next morning. He
opened the front door, but she waited for him
to go first. He took her straight into the sitting-
room. He had a bandage round one eye and his
mouth was badly swollen. The woman’s face,
too, was purple with bruises. Old Wace was out.
He had gone to see if he could find out what had
happened. Mrs. Wace hurried in from the
kitchen.

“ Harry,” she cried out. “ What’s happened
to you ? Who’s this ? ”

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72

“ This is Helen. I’m going to marry her when
I can get the papers out.”

Her jaw dropped. She stared at him. He
had not been so hideously drunk before.

“ No ! It’s all right ! ” he told her. “ I know
what I’m saying. Get me some tea, mother.
My throat’s as dry as an oven.”

It was not at the Golden Lion round the corner
that Harry Wace went to get drunk. It was at
the Three Tuns, some quarter of an hour’s
walk away, where the nice district he lived in
petered out into a slum. He went to get drunk,
solidly, relentlessly drunk. He found out one
night, or rather he deduced the morning after,
that if he drank long enough, all his griefs and
anger, everything that made up the desolate
sum total of himself, seeped out through his
pores, till nothing was left behind but a shell
that comported itself he did not know how, under
the direction of some total stranger.

It was about an hour before closing-time at the
Three Tuns one Saturday night, when some-
thing that was going on in a corner of the bzir
attracted his attention. He had already drunk
a great deal, but he was still some distance away
from the complete oblivion that came upon him
suddenly, enveloping him like a black cloud.

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73

When he saw it happen, he said to himself
it had not happened ; he was already, and sooner
than usual, quite drunk and living in a world
of chimera. Another pint of beer was brought
to him. Then he saw it happen again.

There was a woman sitting in the further corner
of the bar, a rather frail little woman. The colours
she wore were too gaudy for her. She had too
much jewellery on, and all of it was cheap.
She had big eyes and tiny fingers that scampered
about in her lap like mice. A thick-set fellow
sat beside her, wearing a check suit and a heavy
gold chain across his waistcoat. His face and chin
were beetroot-red despite two or three days’
growth of jet-black beard. He looked like a
betting-tout. He was having a good time with
three or four cronies in the same line of
business.

He saw the woman once again pull timidly
at the man’s sleeve. He saw the man once again
strike the cheek with the back of his hand. The
blow was so vicious, her head struck sharp against
the panelling behind her. The man laughed.
His cronies laughed with him.

Wace swigged off what was left of his pint
of beer. He ordered another pint. There was no
need to do anything, because there was nothing
to do. There was no need to go up to the swine
and bring his pint mug smashing on his head.

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74

or to plant his feet in that foul belly. The swine
was not there. The little frightened woman was
not there. He was drunk.

Then the fellow turned on the woman quite
suddenly, without any sort of provocation visible
to the outsider. The fact of her existence became
obnoxious to him. With both his hands he pressed
the woman’s head back as if he wanted to crack
the skull against the panelling. She gave out two
or three short loud yelps.

Harry Wace was on his feet. He rushed over
to the man and brought the thick glass mug
down on his head. The man’s feet slid from under
him. A moment later the cronies were around
him like a falling roof. There must have been
others who had noticed the man’s brutality ;
doubtless they had been afraid to do anything
till a lead came from somewhere. These flung
themselves into the mel^e. In the dust and stink
and uproar of it all, a single image kept Wace’s
mind tethered ; the image of the frail little
woman, with big eyes and a weak chin, and
fingers that scampered about in her lap like mice.
He thrust his head through the knotted confusion.
Where was she ? He could not see her anywhere.
Who was this on the floor ? Was this she ? Were
they trampling her to death under their hooves ?

It was not she. It was a man. A woman’s hand
had caught hold of his. She was pulling him

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75

away out of this. It was she. She had come up
from the back somewhere, or had run off and
come back. He gave to the pull of her hand
on his. He was out in the street with her. “ Come
quick, quick ! ” she whispered. “ This way !
Run ! Run ! You’re bleeding ! ”

“ You’re not doing so well yourself ! ” he
wanted to say, her face was so puffed and bruised.
But he could not. He could not say anything that
sounded in any minute degree facetious. She
looked the most miserable and frightened of
women.

He went by her side, up one side street and
down another and stopped at length outside a
small house. They had not said one word to
each other all this time. She kept a foot or two
ahead of him, as if it might be thought she was
alone, should anyone come up after them who
would prefer her to be alone.

She fumbled about in her bag. “ Oh, my key !
My key ! ” she moaned. “ Where’s my key ? ”

“ Here, give your bag to me ! ” he muttered.
How could such silly trembling fingers find any-
thing they were seeking for ? “ Here it is ! I’ll
open the door for you ! ”

He opened the door. She slid into the dark
lobby out of the feeble light a far lamp threw
down the street. She stood there and did not

move.

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76

“ And now I’ll be saying good night ! ” he
said.

He heard the short gasp of terror in her
throat.

“ Oh, don’t leave me ! He’ll kill me ! Oh,
please don’t stand there ! And you’re bleeding !
I must see to you ! ”

“ That’ll be all right,” he said.

Her voice rose into a pitiful thin wail. “ Oh,
please, please ! ” she begged. “ There’s never
been anything like this before ! ” She reached her
arm out across the threshold and pulled him in
after her. Then she closed the door.

“ Come in ! ” she whispered. “ Don’t make any
noise ! It’s this room here on the right ! ”

He followed her into the room. She went over
and drew the blind. Then she lit the gas ; or
tried to. “ Let me ! ” he said.

“ I’ll put some hot water on your face ! ” she
said. “ Sit down ! — I won’t be long ! ”

The room was a bed-sitting-room. There
was a double bed over against the door and a
wardrobe along the wall opposite the fireplace.
There was a gas stove in the corner near the
window. There were also a chest of drawers, a
battered plush armchair and a wooden chair.
There was not much room to move in the
place.

She found a clean towel and a handkerchief

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77

and some disinfectant. As she got busy, she forgot
her fright for the time being ; except once, when
she heard heavy footsteps approaching from down
the street. The scissors dropped out of her hand.
Her mouth became a tiny black hole of terror.
Then the footsteps passed on. She became busy
again, and competent. She had quite deft finger-
tips.

“ What about you ? ” he said.

“ I’m all right. There’s nothing I can do. I’ll
make myself a drop of tea. Would you like some
tea ? ”

He grimaced. “ No thanks ! ”

“ I’ve got a drop of whisky ! Will you have
some ? ”

“ I must get along now ! ”

“ Oh, please,” she begged him. Her mouth was
trembling again. “Just one small drop ! I can’t
let you go like this ! ”

“ Just a drop ! ”

“ Here now ! You will wait till I’ve made
myself my drop of tea, won’t you ? Here, have
another drop ! ”

“ All right ! I’ll wait ! ”

He saw how she dragged out the preparations
for the tea-making. He sat silently in his chair.
Once he moved his glass across to her for some
more whisky.

The whisky was having no effect on him at all.

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78

He was stone sober now, as if not a drop of
liquor had passed his lips to-night. He saw she
had at length poured out her tea into her teacup.
She was stirring a teaspoonful of condensed milk
into it. She had at length drained the last drop
of her tea.

“ I’ve got to get along now ! ” he said sharply.
“ Do you hear ? Have I got a hat ? ”

She went over towards him and put her hand
on his forehead. The touch unleashed some
hound of fury in him. His eyes opened. They
blazed.

“ Don’t touch me, whore ! ” he cried." Where’s
my hat ? ”

She crumpled on to the floor under his feet.
She sobbed and sobbed till it seemed her frail
ribs would crack. He heard again the sound of
his own words in his ears. He bent down to her.
“ All right, girl ! ” he said. “ I’m sorry ! Have
a drop of whisky, too, eh ? It’ll do you more
good than that tea ! ”

She got up obediently and helped both herself
and him to a dose of whisky. She drained it off.
Then she turned to him. “ You can go now ! ”
she told him. He thought a moment or two. “ I
think I’ll stay ! ” he said quietly.

“ All right ! ” She turned from him. " You
can sleep in that chair ! ”

“ All right ! ”

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79

She turned the gas almost out. He moved his
head away. She undressed ; then she got into a
nightgown she had pulled out from under the
pillow ; then she got into bed. “ Turn out the
gas ! ” she said.

He obeyed her, then he got back into the arm-
chair and tried to sleep. He could not. He knew
she could not sleep, too. Once there was the
sound of approaching footsteps. He heard the held
gasp of terror in her throat.

He was not drunk. He had never been more
grimly sober in his life. He was merely destroyed,
broken up. What had made life comely was
gone, gone. A wretched creature had come up
out of the darkness. She lay in bed a few feet
away from him. The breath hardly stirred in
her, she was so afraid. He might not make life
more comely for her, but it would be less
perilous.

“ Tell me,” he called out. “ Tell me ! You’re
not married to him, are you ? ”

She did not reply for some time. At last she
said “ No ! ” Her voice was so low he could
hardly hear her.

“ I’ll marry you,” he said, “ if you want ! ”

The silence was longer than before. Then, at
length, “ Yes ! ” she whispered fearfully.

“ Very well ! ”

Some twenty minutes later, she spoke again.

8o THE PURSUER

“ If it’s uncomfortable in that chair, you can
come in here ! ”

“ All right ! ” he said. He undressed.

CHAPTER VII

For a long time, for many months, per-
haps for two or three years, Sidney Sharpies did
not remit in the presence of outsiders his gallantry
and tenderness towards Manolita. But if circum-
stances demanded that their exercise should be
extended an hour or two longer than the time
in which they were easy or pleasant to him, he
made her pay for them after the outsiders had
gone. He was never in the least degree brutal, or
even rude, to her. But he treated her with a
frigidity to which she would have found any
brutality preferable. She seemed to become a
complete stranger, like a bore one meets on a sea
crossing, whom we give as wide a berth to as
possible in the cramped quarters available.

Now and again he would sit contemplating her
with that queer smile on his face which was so
much colder than mere coldness. Or was it,
indeed, herself he was contemplating ? The doubt
gave his smile an element of the ghoulish. Was he
aware of her at all when he smiled thus ? Was it
some other person than herself he contemplated
with such icy satisfaction ?

Fp

82 THE PURSUER

Had some woman somehow betrayed him and
sought to win him back again, but it was too late
now ? Herself, Manolita, he did not love. Oh, no.
Whether he had ever loved her at all, he did not
love her now. Had some other woman now come
into his life then ? She did not see how that could
have happened. Though he seemed to take little
pleasure in her company, he made no excuses
to spend his time away from her. She would be
aware by tokens gross and subtle that he had
fallen in love with another woman. But he had
not.

Why, if he loved her so little now, why had he
once pretended he loved her so much, why ? Was
it a game he had been playing ? And the game
was not with her ? Her blood froze at the horror
of the sudden appalling thought. Was it that there
had been a woman then, not now, when he came
down like a horse thief into a stable and carried
her away ? The comparison with a horse thief
struck her like a blow in the mouth.

Perhaps not a woman. A man, perhaps. Per-
haps the very man she had loved, who had
loved her.

They were of an age. They came from the same
town, the same school. Oh, but it was impossible !
To ruin two lives, three lives, in order to gratify
some private rancour — it was unthinkable. And
if it was true, what was she, what had she always

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83

been — a cipher in a sum, a smudge on a piece of
paper ! She made up her mind she must ask him,
she must. He could do no more than strike her,
and she knew he would not do that.

But it was not easy to ask him. Night after
night she tried to speak to him, night after night
the words could not come up to her lips. Then
one night, while they were both reading, she
found herself speaking.

“ Sidney,” she said. “ I want to say something
to you. You won’t be cross with me ? ”

“ But of course I won’t, my dear.” He put
his book down with a smile. “ What an idea ! ”

“ What did you marry me for, Sidney ? ”

“ But, my dear, how can you ask ? ” He
sounded quite hurt. “ Because I loved you, my
dear.”

“ Sidney ! ”

“ Yes ? ”

“ Harry Wace. The man I was engaged to.
Tou know.”

“ I don’t know.”

“ I wanted to ask you about him.”

“ There’s nothing I can tell you.”

“ He was at school with you.”

“ Yes. I think I remember. He was on the
Modern Side, though. I was on the Classical Side.”

“ You didn’t have anything to do with each
other ? ”

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84

“ My dear girl, what are you talking about ?
There were a thousand boys at the school. I
don’t suppose we ever exchanged two words in
our lives.”

“ I see.”

“ Well ? ”

“ Nothing, Sidney.”

“ You are a funny girl, aren't you ? ” He put
his book on the chair beside him and went over
to her and pulled the lobes of her ears. She was
immensely relieved. He was not cross at all.

A couple of years after their marriage, they had
a son, whom they called Rupert. After Rupert
was born, Sharpies began to find he was even less
interested than before in being agreeable to his
wife. He worked very hard in his office, but he
was getting more indolent out of it, and he found
that the amount of energy he used up in being
affectionate towards the child was as much as
he cared to dispose of. Manolita had done her
part well enough in bringing about the little
fellow’s existence. Well, she had a nice home and
a couple of servants and a garden. She could
have the local women in for tea and cards when
she liked. He sometimes thought it might be
helpful if she had a local man in now and again
to entertain her, though on the whole he
thought it was best not. After all, he never had
any temptation to entertain himself with other

THE PURSUER 85

women. He understood that people called him
a model husband.

He did not approve of his wife spending too
much time with his son. He did not want to
make a milksop of the young man. It might be
different for a girl, but a small boy should have
as much as possible of the male society of his
father, so long as he didn’t make a nuisance of
himself. That was the only danger — he might
make a nuisance of himself.

However, he magnanimously consented to run
the risk. He put himself out to endure quite a
deal of the boy’s company. He even took him
away with him for a holiday once or twice, with
just a nurse to look after him. After all, his
mother had him all day long to herself, while he
was away at the office.

He would fill his pockets with sweets and small
toys, and have a great surprise game with him
letting him run through his pockets. If, on the
other hand, he ever saw the boy’s mother hand
him a sweet, his brow would contract with fury.
“ What sort of a digestion do you think he’ll
have if you mollycoddle him like that ? Throw
it away, Rupert, do you hear ? At once ! Naughty
mamma, isn’t she, trying to give little Rupert a
bad tummy-ache ! ”

Sidney Sharpies set himself out, in fact, to
enchant his son ; as he had done once before,

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with a small boy not many years older than
Rupert, and failed ; as he had done with the
boy’s mother, and succeeded. He succeeded
again. The small boy idolised his father. He did
not go off to sleep if his father did not kiss him
good night. If he did not kiss him in the morning
before he v/ent off to the office, it was a dark and
empty day for him. His mother sat beside him
and looked on and mourned. Her heart was
heavy.

There came at last a stage when Sidney
Sharpies could not disguise from himself the fact
that the small boy had, in fact, become something
of a nuisance. Essentially, Sharpies was a person
who liked to keep himself to himself. There had
once been a person who might have made him
less of a solitary, but that person had failed him.
His wife and his small boy rather got in the way
of his books and his collections and his music ;
and his dog, too. He was very attached to his dog.
He was never cruel to the boy (as he was now
and again to the mother) for the simple reason
that he did not relish the idea that Rupert might
turn to his mother for comfort. If he did that,
she might some time usurp the place in the boy’s
affections he had won with such real hard work.

As far as the boy was concerned, it never

THE PURSUER 87

occurred to him that it was not he himself who
was at fault, if his father was a little unkind to
him now and again. He would lie awake half
the night wondering what he had done. If he
could find nothing to attach the blame to, how-
ever strenuously he sought, he would realise it
was because he was a silly boy and had no sense.
If he weren’t a silly boy, he would realise clearly
what it was he had done to upset his kind lovely
father. Next morning he would put his arms
round his neck very timidly and whisper :
“ Please, daddy, don’t be cross with me any
more. I won’t do it ever again, ever.”

Sharpies would wonder what bug was biting
the boy. “ All right, Rupert.” The old bewitching
smile would be in his eyes. “ Right you are,
then. Be a good lad.” He might even remember
to bring him back a tin of sweets that day, as he
used to while there was still some ghost of
competition between himself and the mother.

But, frankly, they were both getting in his way,
particularly the mother. He found his temper
getting shorter and shorter with her. She was not
improving in looks as the years went on. She was
running to fat, as women with Spanish blood in
their veins tend to do. When she made the
suggestion that she should take Rupert for a few
months with her to her father’s home on the
Tibidabo hill above Barcelona, he was so pleased

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and relieved he almost threw his arms round her
neck and kissed her.

“ A jolly good idea, Manolita ! ” he cried.
“ Go and have a nice long holiday ! ”

The small boy did not like the idea at all. He
cried a great deal at the thought of having to
leave his father. He was not even appeased when
his father generously said he might come over
himself in a month or two. A holiday would do
him no harm, either. When he still went on
crying, his father seized him by the shoulders and
just looked at him. He said not a word to him,
but just looked at him in a funny way. The boy
stopped crying. He shivered a little, but he
remained dead silent. Then his father stopped
looking at him in that funny way and smiled at
him just ordinary.

“ You will come soon, won’t you, daddy ? ”
the boy asked faintly. “ Promise you will ! ”

“ Of course, I promise ! ” said Sharpies easily.
“ Now go along and wash your face, there’s a
good chap ! ”

The sojourn at old Bienvenida’s house in
Barcelona was not a success. It was not a question
of money, for Manolita had money of her own
and Sharpies gave her a thoroughly reasonable
allowance. It was not Bienvenida’s second brood

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89

of children, either. They were not kind to Rupert,
but they were not unkind to him. They just
didn’t recognise his existence, and he didn’t
mind that. If he couldn’t be with his father, there
wasn’t anybody else he wanted to be with.

The trouble was the second Senora, the
Englishwoman from Southport. She was a large
florid woman, a good wife, a good mother, very
pleased and relieved to find herself a mother, for
there had been no luck with her first marriage.
She had sense. She realised after a few days of
not very cordial conversation with her step-
daughter that Manolita would never go back to
her husband, whether the child went or not.
But the child wouldn’t go, either. Manolita would
do everything either side of hell to prevent the
small boy going back, too.

That looked like a permanent addition, or two
additions, to the house on Tibidabo. The
Senora disliked the idea strongly. She had moved
from the house her husband had brought her to
because that had been the first w'ife’s house. She
wanted no reminder of her predecessor, so she
sold the old lot and got in a new houseful of
furniture. Least of all did she want her pre-
decessor’s daughter about the place, not to men-
tion the daughter’s pasty-faced son.

She did not make any violent effort to disguise
these ideas from her stepdaughter. Before long,

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90

Manolita got into touch with a number of agents
who knew about houses and villas in the Mediter-
ranean resorts. She heard at last there was a
suitable villa she might have, with servants, on
the “ Mountain ” above Tangier. She thought
Tangier would be suitable, for there were both
English and Spanish residents there, and the
climate was good. So she WTote and informed her
husband that the visit to her father’s home had
not been a success and she had taken a villa in
Tangier for six months.

He sent her a cheque in his answering letter.
He also told her she could take on the villa for
a further six months, if she felt like it.

CHAPTER VIII

I

“Give me some tea, mother. My throat’s
as dry as an oven ! ” Harry Wace said to his
mother. “ I think Helen would like some, too.”

Mrs. Wace still stood staring. She seemed in-
capable of speech or movement.

“ You’d best take your hat and coat off,” he
said to the woman. The woman stood hunched
up between the door and the arm of the sofa.
She looked terrified, as if she thought the older
woman would suddenly turn round and let fly
at her. She lifted her fingers to her hat, but they
trembled so she could hardly move the hatpins.

“ Here, let me ! ” said Wace. He helped her
remove her things. He was about to take them
out into the passage to hang them up, when he
saw his mother had not yet made a move in the
direction of the kettle. “ Well, mother,” he said.
“ If you won’t make me a cup of tea, Helen
will.”

The outrageous idea penetrated through her
shock. “ I was just going to,” she mumbled. “ I
was looking for that poker.” The poker was where

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92

it always was, sticking up through the bars of the
fender.

He went and hung the woman’s hat and coat
on the hall-stand, and came in again. His mother
was muttering to herself incoherently as she
flattened the coal down to take the kettle. Helen
was still standing between the door and the arm
of the sofa.

“ Why don’t you sit down, Helen ? ” he said.
She sat down on the edge of the sofa, like a child
in an institute summoned to the presence of the
almoner. His eyes moved quickly between the
two women. He seemed about to make some sort
of an effort to establish some relationship between
the two, when suddenly his forces sagged. He felt
incapable of the slightest effort. They’d both
have to lump it. There’d be time. “ Where’s the
newspaper ? ” he muttered. His mother went out
into the scullery to fill the kettle. “ There ! ”
She indicated with her chin the top of the sewing-
machine. She kept her eyes fixedly away from the
wretched creature on the sofa.

She had just poured boiling water into the tea-
pot to heat it, when she heard the sound of the
key turning in the front door. She put the teapot
back on to the hob so quickly she almost broke
it, then she ran to the door.

“ What’s the matter, lass ? ” asked old Wace,
trembling. “ Have you had bad news ? ”

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93

“ Come into the parlour,” she besought him.
“ Don’t go in there ! ” She closed the parlour
door behind them.

“ Why — what ? ” the old man quivered.

“ He’s all right ! He’s in there ! It isn’t that !
Just a bandage on his forehead ! ”

“ What’s the excitement about, mother ? ”

“ He’s got a woman in there ! He says he’s
going to marry her ! ”

Old Wace breathed a deep sigh of relief. “ Oh,
is that all ? He’s drunk again, eh ? ”

“ I don’t think he’s drunk — not now. She’s a
loose woman, John ! ”

“ Come on, mother, let’s go in ! ”

They went in. “ Good morning, Harry,” said
old Wace. “ I hear you’ve brought a visitor ! ”
He turned round to the woman on the sofa. Her
lips were trembling. Tears stood in her eyes. She
fumbled in her bag and brought out a handker-
chief and dabbed her eyes with it.

“ Yes,” said Wace. “ This is Helen. Her other
name’s Walker. Mother’s told you, eh ? ”

“ Pleased to meet you,” said old Wace. “ Yes,
Harry, your mother’s told me. A bit sudden-like,
eh ? ” The woman on the sofa caught her breath
in a sob. “ Don’t fret now, lass,” the old man
requested her. “ We’ll soon put it all to rights.
Were you making tea, mother ? I’ll be glad for
a cup, too.” He was about to zisk what was

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94

wrong with Harry’s forehead, when he thought
better of it. That was the way to handle it, tact,
just a little tact. The boy was sober enough now,
but clearly he had been far drunker last night
than he had ever been before. Sometime during
the proceedings he had promised to marry this
poor little fly-by-night. He probably wouldn’t
remember it, but he felt bound to stick by his
word. It did the boy credit.

Old Wace was very tactful. He expended pro-
digies of tact that day, and for days after, but the
boy’s mind was made up. He ordered the small
room on the small landing to be got ready for her.
She was to sleep there till they got married, which
was as soon as possible. There was not room for
the four of them in that small house. The old
people were going to stay on, with a woman
servant living in, to look after them. The young
people were going to have a small house of their
own.

The mother tried to argue with him, but she
could do nothing more than cry. The old man
got tired of being tactful and got angry. But the
boy did not seem to listen at all. He seemed to
be thinking of something else all the time. One
day his father lost his temper completely. He
caught hold of Harry by the shoulder, shouting :
“ Helen ? Who the devil is this Helen ? When are
you going to send her back where she came from ? ”

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95

But all Harry did was to repeat the name
stupidly : “ Helen ? Helen ? ” as if he had himself
never heard the name before.

The old man threatened he and his mother
would turn their backs on him. They’d just take
their few belongings and go. Harry took no
notice of him. “ Go,” he said, “ if you want to ! ”
The old man would have gone. But it meant the
workhouse for them both. He had no right to
condemn the old woman to the workhouse for
the rest of her days. “ All right ! ” he said.
“ Have it your own way ! But you’ll rue the day,
you mark my words ! ”

The woman named Helen kept house for Harry
Wace efficiently. She was a good cook and liked
crocheting centres for tables and runners for
dressers. She rarely smiled but she did not seem
unhappy. He got drunk now and again, but very
rarely. On one occasion a bout very nearly lost
him his job. He decided he would cut drink
out altogether, excepting for an occasional night-
cap. He kept to his resolution without difficulty.

The house they lived in was bigger than the
one in Withington, so the best room was called
the drawing-room, not the parlour. There was
a piano in the drawing-room. When she felt
happy, it did not show in her face ; she went up

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96

to the piano and vamped out a tune, striking
very hard with both hands. Her repertoire in-
cluded “ I dreamt that I dwelt in marble halls,”
“ Thora,” “ Killarney,” and several more songs
of the same type and period. When she played a
tune, she looked up. She liked to be praised for
her playing. Women who spend a lot of their time
in the saloon bars of public-houses play like that.

Wace’s parents died a year or two after his
marriage, within a month of each other. He took
it badly, but he got over it in time. He was
getting on very well indeed in his office. Outside
his office, he had no interests excepting his small
garden. He was as keen on his garden as she was
on her piano, though he spent many hours at a
stretch in his garden, while to her the piano was
the vehicle by which she expressed for a few
minutes at a stretch the occasions cf her greatest
well-being.

They had a daughter in course of time, whom
they named Judy. It seemed that to Judy’s mother
the child was more of a surprise than a joy. She
could hardly credit it when she found that she
was as good as the next woman and had managed
to bring a baby into the world. She would look
at the small creature minute after minute in-
credulously, and put her back on the pillow
again, shaking her head. The outsider might
have thought the nurse was the child’s mother.

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97

for the mother seemed almost afraid to fondle her,
as if it might be thought she was taking a liberty.

“ Give the lass to me,” the nurse demanded, a
large emphatic Lancashire woman. “ Anybody’d
think you were afeared of her ! There, now, duck,
there now ! Come to nanny ! Don’t cry now !
There now, there ! ”

“ Please,” said the mother, some minutes later,
“ can I have her now, Mrs. Lord ? ”

“ You’d best not,” Mrs. Lord said. “ You’d
drop her ! ”

Mrs. Lord stayed on with the Wace family.
She arranged to get herself kept on as house-
keeper.

Judy grew up without any great affection for
her mother. There had always been moments
when Helen had felt she had no right to be there
at all, however well she dusted the drawing-room
or looked after the dinner. The advent of the
child made these moments rather more than less
frequent. She could not prevent the idea spread-
ing even to Judy.

There was a sort of conspiracy between Judy
and Mrs. Lord. They often whispered and made
jokes together, and stopped the moment Mrs.
Wace came into the room. Wace was not aware of
it, or if he was, it did not interest him. Once his
Gp

THE PURSUER

9 «

wife tried to utter a protest against the way she
was being elbowed out of her daughter’s thoughts.
But she was too inarticulate. She did not manage
to convey what she meant. He said : “ I don’t
know what you are talking about, I don’t think
you do either.” She made no effort to utter a
protest again.

Mrs. Lord’s respect for her employer grew in
the proportion that her respect for his wife
diminished. He never rebuked her, though her
treatment of Mrs. Wace sometimes bordered on
impertinence. He was actually not aware of it
but she interpreted his silence as approval. He
had a certain sort of good looks, and there was
always a class of people who thought him really
good-looking. Mrs. Lord pronounced him to be
handsome as a statue. He attained heroic pro-
portions in her eyes. She spoke of him to his
daughter in terms of dithyramb. Judy knew that
he was human, too, for he often bought her
sweets and toys, being an averagely generous
father. These favours acquired a legendary
quality, for she now learned he stepped down out
of the clouds to bestow them. She thought it a
pity he had married a mother so dim and dun.
Why had he not married a lady worthy of him,
some radiant blue-eyed creature, piled up with
golden hair ? Mrs. Lord was awaiting the day
when it would be suitable to give the little girl

THEPURSUER 99

an idea or two on the subject, for it was one on
which she had made herself an authority.

It came when Judy was about six years old.
One afternoon, an hour or so before daddy came
back from the office, a man called. He was a man,
not a gentleman. Judy saw him push the front
gate open and come up the steps. He was wearing
a check suit with a gold chain across his waist-
coat. He had a brown bowler-hat and a red face.
It was a big red face and he had a big neck. He
was twisting a cigar round in the corner of his
mouth.

Judy was in the drawing-room, and the
window was open. She heard him ask for Mrs.
Wace in a loud voice. The maid, Sally, didn’t ask
him in. She did not think he was the sort of man
to ask in. She asked him would he please wait and
she would see if madam was in. She then tried to
close the door, but he put his foot in the doorway.
He stood there with his thumbs thrust into his
waistcoat, turning the cigar round and round in
his mouth.

Mrs. Lord then came to the door.

“ What do you want ? ” she asked.

“ I want to see Mrs. Wace.”

“ She isn’t in,” said Mrs. Lord.

“ Well if she isn’t. I’ll wait till she comes.”

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“ You can’t come in ! ”

“ Oh, can’t I ! ” he sneered,

“ Who are you ? ” she asked.

“ Tell her it’s Charley, her cousin. She'll
know ! ”

Judy could see all this going on through the
curtains of the bay window. She could then see
a funny face come over Mrs. Lord. She almost
smiled at the man, it was close to being a wink.

“ Oh, if Mrs. Wacc is your cousin,” she said.
“ of course that makes it quite different ! Will
you come in ? Come straight this way into the
drawing-room. I’ll call Mrs. Wace ! ”

Judy thought she would die when Mrs. Lord
brought the rcd-faced man into the drawing-
room. For a moment she thought of plunging
under the table. But she was sure the cigar would
make her cough, and the man would drag her
out by her legs and pull her hair fc^lier.

“ What are you doing in here ? ” exclaimed
Mrs. Lord severely. “ Get upstairs to your own
room at once ! ”

She went upstairs and did not know anything
that happened in the drawing-room between her
mother and the man who said he was her cousin.
But she did not believe he was her cousin. She
knew he was a bad man and a liar.

Next morning her mother went out shopping.
She did not come back at lunch-time nor at

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lOI

tea-time. Judy went to bed and her mother still
had not come back.

She did not sleep all night. She heard her father
and Mrs. Lord talking a long time together down-
stairs. He forgot to come in and say good night
to her. She was too frightened to cry. Next
morning, he went off to the office without saying
good morning to her, either. No one remembered
her. She came downstairs in her nightgown.

“ Where is mammy ? ” she asked. “ Didn’t she
come back last night ? ”

There was an air of almost obscene triumph in
Mrs. Lord’s face. She put her finger to her mouth.
“ Your father said you mustn’t talk about your
mother. I’m not to talk about her cither. She’s
gone away into the country. I mustn’t tell you
more than that. I don’t know anything more,
either.” She cackled, she was so happy.

“ But you do, you do ! ” said Judy. Her eyes
were full of tears. “ Has she gone away with
that man ? ”

“ You must go upstairs at once, Judy, do you
hear ? You’ll catch your death in those bare
feet ! Go up at once, I say, and I’ll come and
dress you ! ”

“ She shouldn’t have gone with that man ! ”
said Judy. “ He is a bad man ! ”

102

THE PURSUER

Her mother stayed away in the country for
three more years. Her father told Judy the doctors
had made up their minds it was better for her
health she should stay away in the country. She
gathered he did not want to talk about her, or be
reminded of her. The child respected his wishes.
She did not miss her mother, either.

But a change came over Mrs. Lord, She was
bursting with satisfaction and inside knowledge.
One way or another, she managed to let Judy
share some of the inside knowledge, though she
made it clear there was lots more, and Judy
would share it all with her when she was older.
She used to like Mrs. Lord quite a lot in the old
days, before the bad man came. But she did not
like her at all now.

Then three years later a letter came ; or perhaps
several letters. Judy realised quite quickly that
it had to do with her mother, who had gone off
into the country such a long time ago. She did not
believe she had gone away because her health was
bad. Mrs. Lord did not let her believe it, either.
She had gone away with that man. She concluded
that that man had left her now. She was sorry if
she was going to try and come back. She had
never been a mother like real mothers, either to
herself or her daddy.

For several days her daddy and Mrs. Lord
quarrelled dreadfully. Then suddenly her father

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103

flared up and turned round on Mrs. Lord with a
a face blood-red with anger. He told her she
could go at once, then and there. She went
upstairs and packed up her things and went. Her
mother came back into the house two days later.
Another woman took the place of Mrs. Lord as
housekeeper.

This time her mother stayed with her father
only two years. When she went this time, Judy
was old enough for her father to tell her some-
thing of the truth. She was, in fact, several years
older than her age. What he did not tell her, she
pieced out for herself, for she was a lonely child,
and had plenty of time to brood over it. What
she did not understand then, she came to under-
stand later.

She realised that the other man was the whole
world to her mother, food and drink, sky and
earth, everything. He had always been the same
though he hit her in the face and knocked her
down and kicked her while she was on the floor.
She had been grateful to her father, but she had
not loved him. She had not loved the child she
had by him. All those years her mother and her
father had been together, she had only been
living with a little part of herself, almost with
nothing of herself at all. There might have been
little more or much more. It was not possible to
tell. But when that man came back for her there

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104

wasn’t anything else for her to do. She went to
him.

She had been with the man for two and a half
years or more. Or rather he had been with her.
He hit her all the time, and then he got tired of
her again. Perhaps some other woman had struck
his fancy. Whatever happened he left her mother
penniless. She had been starving for several
njonths, then she got very low in her mind and
had written her father a letter ! She was not a
strong person at all, excepting in her love for the
man.

Her father had said to himself he would not
answer the letter. But another letter came, and
probably she threatened she would kill herself.
Also, she was the mother of Judy. He wrote to her
and sent her money. At last he saw her. She
promised on her oath she would never treat Judy
and himself like that again.

Once again the man came and asked her to go
back to him and she had broken her oath and
gone back. There was something more in her
than it was easy to see, or that man would not call,
her in that way. But she had gone. She had gone
for ever, this time. She would not write, and if she
wrote her husband would not read. But he knew
she would not write. It was all over now.

“ It isn’t all over now,” the girl whispered.
She stood beside him, but she was not looking

THE PURSUER IO5

into his face. She was staring away over his
shoulder, a long distance away.

“ What do you mean, Judy ? What can we do
more ? ”

“ I don’t mean like that, daddy.” She still was
not looking into his face. She was not finding it
easy to say what she meant. “ I mean it’s not all
over. Only in one way it is. In another way it’s
only just beginning.”

He took hold of her shoulders. “ You’re a funny
girl, aren’t you ? ” he said.

She turned her head towards him. “ It’s like
this, daddy. It’s funny. I feel I’m to blame.”

“ Judy, don’t talk like that ! I never heard any-
thing so silly.”

“ No, daddy, no. Please don’t be cross with me.
It’s hard for me to say how I mean. I don’t mean
she went away because I was a bad girl. I don’t
think I was bad — anything special, like some
girls.”

“ I should think not, indeed.”

“ I used to be naughty in the old days, while
Mrs. Lord was here. But I was young, wasn’t I,
daddy ? And I’ve not been so naughty now, have
I ? ”

“ No.”

“ But I’m to blame still. How shall I say it,
daddy ? It’s because of me she came. I had to be
here, so she came. That’s why it didn’t matter

I06 THE PURSUER

if she came back or not, because I was already
here. She was just like somebody we knew staying
with us,”

“ My word, Judy, what is the matter with
you ? ” He took hold of her by the shoulders
again and shook her,

“ Daddy,” she said quietly, “ I had to be here
to look after you,”

“To look after me ? ” The lips began to relax
into a smile, but before it was achieved, they
began to contract again, A darkness came slowly
up across his eyes. He said nothing for some time.
His ears were filled with the noise of wind and
heaving waters. Then he spoke.

“ Yes, Judy,” he said, “ I shall need you some
day to look after me. You will, will you, Judy ? ”

“ You’ll see, daddy,” she said.

2

Two or three years after these events, Mr.
Hannan, one of the partners in the firm where
Wace was employed, severed his connection
with his fellows in Doomington and bought
a controlling partnership in a firm of outside
brokers in London, with offices in Whipley
Court. Mr. Hannan was aware, more than
Wace himself, how much the success of the firm
in Doomington had been due to Wace’s industry

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107

and acumen. He proposed to Wace that he should
accompany him to London, with the prospect
of a partnership within the course of a year or
two. It might have been thought that his first
reaction to the proposal would have been at
least favourable, if not enthusiastic. But it was
not so.

“ I — I beg your pardon,” he stammered.
He went quite pale. “ Did you say London ? ”

“ Of course I did,” smiled Mr. Hannan.
“ What did you think I said. Hong-Kong ? ”

“ No ! ” said Wace hurriedly. “No ! ” His voice
rose to a shout. “ I won’t go to London ! ”

“ My dear chap,” said Mr. Hannan. “ Don’t
bite my head off ! It’s only a business proposi-
tion. If there’s any reason why you don’t want
to go to London, don’t go ! Are you quite well,
Wace ? Anyhow, take a few days to think it
over ! ”

Was there any reason why he shouldn’t go
to London ? Of course there was no reason
in the world why he shouldn’t go to London.
Merely because Sidney Sharpies lived there,
was that reason enough to turn down the offer
of a lifetime ?

He lifted his eyes to say a further word or two
on the matter. He dropped them again. It was
not Mr. Hannan who stood before him, smiling
a little, winking a little, pointing with one thumb

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io8

over his shoulder, downwards, southwards, to-
wards London, out of safety, into peril, into
murder.

“ I’m not quite well, Mr. Hannan,” he
muttered. “ If you don’t mind, I will take a day
or two off, to think it over. Thank you very much,
Mr. Hannan.”

London was a big place. You could go on for
years and years without setting eyes on Sidney
Sharpies.

Yes, but sooner or later, you would see him.
Sharpies would make sure of that. And London
is not a big place, the city is not a big place.
Sharpies had an office in Mincing Lane, hadn’t
he ? One day you would be walking towards
Mansion House Station at a rush hour, with
hundreds upon hundreds of people pressing at
your heels. But you would be conscious of one
out of all these hundreds, twenty yards behind
you, one yard behind you, his breath hot upon
your neck.

The fantasy recurred two or three times
during the next day or two. It woke him up from
sleep. His brow was wet with terror.

“ I won’t go ! ” he cried aloud. But he knew
quite well he would go.

He wants me there, does he ? he mused. Well,

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109

he'll have me there. He's left me alone too long. He can't
live without me. I'll turn on him one day and . . .
and . . .

“ Fm mad,” he said to himself quietly next
morning. “ Am I going to remain a snotty-
nosed elementary school kid all my life long ?
Besides, there’s Judy to consider. She’s fourteen
now. She’s bound to be reminded of things so
long as we stay in Doomington. I could send her
to a good school in London. Of course, Fll
accept the offer. It’s a chance in a thousand.”

He asked for Mr. Hannan a day or two later.
“ Thank you, it’s very kind of you. I accept
your offer. I hope you’ll find me worthy of your
confidence.”

CHAPTER IX

M ANOLiTA Sharples wrotc and thanked
her husband for suggesting that she should take
on the lease of the house in Tangier for a second
six months, if she liked. When she had been there
six months, she took it for a further five years,
with the option of indefinite renewal. It was
possible she might see her husband again, but
she was quite sure they would never again share
the same establishment. She knew he wanted
it as little as she did herself

She saw that she could get on as satisfactorily
in Tangier as she could anywhere in the world,
now that her husband had had the little he
wanted out of her, and had let her go. Excepting
for Rupert. She hardly dared think how Rupert
might affect things. Her house stood on a terraced
hill, whose flowers cascaded down to yellow
cliffs. Great urns of golden lilies stood beside
the door. She was looked after by a Moor from
the Riff country and his three daughters, who
were like the golden lilies at the door. There
were pleasant people in the houses on the sur-
rounding hills. The English residents and the

THE PURSUER

III

Spanish officials took her up kindly. There was
always something doing in the way of bridge-
parties in the afternoon and dinner-parties and
dances at night. She was a fair horsewoman
and she went out pig-sticking into the musky
country southward where lentisk and myrtle
were smothered at length in sand-dunes and over-
head the pink storks went sailing, their feet
floating out like trailers behind them.

It all looked as if it might be fairly happy, if
not for Rupert. The fact was the boy’s heart
was breaking with longing for his father. He slept
in a room that led out of hers through a curtained
archway. Night after night, she could hear him
sobbing to himself, when he thought his mother
was asleep and he could let himself go in safety.
It was hard to get him to eat anything. Even
horses hardly brought a flicker of interest into
his eyes. She bought him a pony, but he did no
more than make him the confidant of his sorrows.
The child was fading away visibly.

Something drastic must be done about it. But
what could be done ? She could only send him
back to London to be with his father. But she
was not at all sure his father would take him.
He seemed to have tired of his son almost as
completely as of his wife. He had raised not the
least objection when she suggested taking him
away ; and though there had been a clear

112 TltSt fURSUER

enough understanding between them that they
were separating for ever, he had made no stipu-
lation at all about the boy’s future. She assumed
she could bring enough pressure to bear on him
to get him to have the boy. She could doubtless
send him doctor’s certificates which would make
it quite clear that if the boy did not go back to
him, the consequences would be dangerous.

Oh, but was it fair, was it fair, the boy should
go back to him ? She could imagine how suavely
and subtly he would poison the boy’s mind
against her. He would make her an ogress in the
boy’s eyes. She would never see him again.
There would be nothing at all left to her in all the
world.

She was convinced it would be fatal for the
boy, as well as herself, if he went back to London.
The game of poisoning the boy’s mind against
her might amuse him for half a year,^or a year.
But what then ? He would set to w ork against
the boy himself. He would be ruthless. The boy
was sensitive. To what dreadful lengths might
not his father drive him ?

Rupert must not go back. Far better that he
should cherish this false idol in his heart, than
break it completely by learning its true nature.
But if he did not go back, would he outgrow his
grief? She looked at him wretchedly. He sat
before an untouched dish of food, his head

THE PUie^SHSR 1 13

sagging on his neck. He looked like an old man
already.

One day she had a dreadful shock. He said
he was going down to the stable to talk to his
pony. Two hours went by and he did not come
back. He did not come back for lunch. She gave
the alarm. The place was searched frantically.
He was nowhere to be found. Notice was given
to the police, while AH the Moor and his sons
and all his friends beat the surrounding country-
side.

It was not till quite late in the evening that the
police brought him back. He had found some-
how that a boat was leaving for England that
day, and had hidden himself among some
packing-cases and lain there all day long. Then,
in the evening, he had sidled forward to the
companion-way and tried to walk up as in-
conspicuously as possible into the boat. When
he was stopped, they asked him what he wanted.

“ I want my daddy,” he said.

“ Where is he ? ” they asked. “ He’ll be coming
on soon. You’d best wait for him ! ”

“ He’s in London ! ” the child said. “ He said
he’d come, but he hasn’t ! I want to go to him ! ”

When he saw they would not let him go, he
cried like a little animal in pain. He cried in the
arms of the police all the way up the “ Moun-
tain ” to his mother’s home.

Hp

THE PURSUER

1 14

Next day Manolita cabled her husband, and
a week later Sharpies came. The child could
hardly catch his breath for joy. An arrangement
was entered into between Sharpies and his wife.
Sharpies felt it was less of a nuisance if he came
over to the boy than if the boy went over to him.
He felt also that the sea-voyage and a week or
two’s holiday in Morocco would do him no
harm. He agreed, therefore, to come over and
spend a week or two annually with his son. If
she insisted on being there at the same time, well
and good. But he would not object if she were
not there.

The boy went to school and learned to ride
and to stick pig and to disport himself decently.
But all the rest of the year was dim in his eyes,
compared with the fierce glory of the two weeks ■
his father spent with him. It was rarely less than
two weeks. He struck off day by day upon the
calendar, and the day his father arrived, he tore
up the calendar and threw the pieces into the
waste-paper basket. These ten or fourteen days
were of a nature not to be computed alongside
of other days. Sidney Sharpies was amused and
charmed by his son’s rapture. He found it quite
a pleasant change to come over from Wimbledon
to Tangier.

CHAPTER X

So you've come to London, have you ? mused Sidney
Sharpies. You've come into the City, have you?
And who, pray, said you might come to London ?
It seems to me you're asking for it, Mr. Wace. It's
impertinent, Mr. Wace, and well you know it. It's
blasted impertinent !

He tried to work himself up into a fury, but
found he couldn’t. He realised to his surprise
he wasn’t angry at all. On the contrary he was
forced to confess that the arrival of Wace in
London filled him with an extraordinary sense
of well-being. He felt he had company again.

And there was a daughter, too.

Sidney Sharpies flattered himself he was a self-
sufficient man. And on the whole he was. He
found time go by quite as quickly as he liked.
He had recently moved into a new house that
looked over the Regent’s Park Canal. The house
had been ignored by the house-hunter, probably
because there were warehouses on both sides
of it. It had a small garden, and beyond the

THE PURSUER

ll6

garden-railings there was quite a strip of open
greenness before you got to the canal bank.
It was a perfect place to take the dog out for his
night’s run. He had fallen for a dog again. When
the last one died, he had vowed he would never
have another. But there was no arguing with
Jock. Jock merely attached himself to his legs
and did not consider the possibility of being
divorced from them. So he broke his vow and
took Jock on. Jock was a carroty tousle-haired
mongrel, the only unkempt creature in Sidney
Sharpies’s world.

The house had been built in a good period
and there was lots of it, but it was in a bad condi-
tion. It took Sharpies more than a year to get
it as he liked it, before he moved in. And it kept
him quite busy after he had moved in. He liked
the thought of his suavely lit smoothly panelled
house flanked by its uncouth warehouses. He had
the house to look after, and Jock. He sometimes
went to concerts when Jock inferred he might.
He was a ballet enthusiast and went to the ballet
without consulting Jock. He was a member of
several clubs and collected Victorian glass and
mezzotints. There was quite enough in his life
to keep him busy and amused.

He had had a housekeeper for several years.
She was getting on now. He was used to her
and kept her on. There was also a maid living

THE PURSUER

II7

in. He did not like to feel there were too many
people cluttering up the place, so that the other
servants slept out, the chauffeur and the gardener
and the woman who helped in the kitchen. The
name of the housekeeper was Mrs. Carvill, the
maid was Jean.

He had an office in Mincing Lane. He had
recently entered the rubber market, and was
doing very well. It was thought he was doing very
well with his life altogether. Both his single and
his married friends envied him. He seemed to
them to have made the best of both worlds.

But there were moments when he was doing less
well than they knew. These moments caught hold
of him sometimes even in his office, or among his
friends. But nothing happened to his face. He
went on talking or smiling. They happened more
frequently when he was alone in his house by the
Canal. Then he could not bear the faces of the
two women in the house. The dog seemed a mis-
begotten hairy brute. The creature slunk away
on his belly, realising that the desolation and the
mystery had come.

He was lonely. Loneliness was like a growth
inside him, clawing at his vitals. It was not for
his wife nor his son he was lonely at these times.
It was another than they.

The housekeeper had a large attic at the top of
the house. The maid had a smaller one beside it.

THE PURSUER

ll8

One night Mrs. Carvill was awakened by Jean
tugging fiercely at her shoulder.

“ Get up, get up, Mrs. Carvill ! ” the girl
implored.

“ What is it ? What’s the matter with you ? ”
the other asked sleepily.

“ Can’t you hear ? Oh can’t you hear, Mrs.
Carvill ? ”

“ No I can’t ! ”

“ Hush — listen now ! There it goes again ! ”

“ Why, yes, I think I can ! It’s Jock, isn’t it ?
He’s been locked out ! ”

“ No, Mrs. Carvill, look ! Shall I switch the
light on ? Here’s Jock beside your bed ! ”

The animal was stretched out close to the foot
of the bed, his head between his paws. He was
trembling as if he had just come out of ice-cold
water.

“ What’s he doing there ? Why isn’t he on the
mat outside his master’s room ? ”

“ I don’t know ! Listen ! ”

“ It’s Mr. Sharpies ! ”

“ Yes ! ”

“You fool ! He’s ill ! He’s got toothache !
Why didn’t you tell me sooner ! ” She thrust her
feet into slippers and put a dressing-gown round
her. Then she went downstairs.

“ Mr. Sharpies ! ” she called out. There was
no reply. “ Mr. Sharpies ! ” she called again.

THE PURSUER

“9

“ Can I do anything for you ? ” Complete
silence. “ Are you all right, Mr. Sharpies ? ”
The door opened on her suddenly. Her em-
ployer stood in the doorway fully dressed. His
face was twisted with fury. The green eyes glared
like an animal’s.

“ Go away, you blasted idiot ! Go away ! ” he
shouted at her. “ Don’t come unless you’re asked
for ! ” He shut the door in her face.

At last the idea came to Sidney Sharpies that
he would send Harry Wace a letter. This was
about two years after Wace had come up to
London. He knew that he would carry out the
idea though he argued against himself for many
months.

He’ll snub you. And what if he will ? It can’t be
worse than this. Oh can’t it ! Just you wait ! After all,
he must be as sick of it as me. We’re both getting on
now. We’re nearer forty than thirty. You’ve done him
harm, he’s done you none. What ? He’s done me no
harm? What the hell are you talking about? Done me
no harm ? I know you’re mad, but I never thought you
were a fool.

Then the argument took another turn.

It’ll be dangerous. Let sleeping dogs lie. It’ll be the
element that will send the whole mixture sky-high.

Frightened, are you ? Ho, so you’ re frightened ! I had

120

THE PURSUER

my doubts before, but that's done them in. Pd like to see
him touch me with his little finger. He daren't. If he
only would! That's what's been wrong all the time,
all the time, from the very beginning, all the time.

Don't you see? I'd like him to. I want him to. Let
him turn round and break me into pieces.

But this time he won't. I think he won't. Perhaps he'll
write back and say : I think you' re quite right, Sharpies^
It's gone on long enough.

So the endless argument turned and turned and
turned in his brain like a mouse in a cage.

He wrote Wace the following letter. It was
dated April the twenty-ninth of that year.

Dear Wage,

I’ve been meaning to write to you for some
time, ever since I learned you came to London.
I want to say I’m sorry. Would you like to have
a meal with me som.e time, or just a drink, if
you would prefer it ? I would like it a great
deal.

Yours sincerely,

Sidney Sharples.

He dropped the letter into the pillar-box and
instantly wished it back into his hands again, so
that he could put a match to it and burn it. But

THE PURSUER I2I

at night he was happy. He smiled up into the
ceiling. Jock was promoted from the rug outside
the door to the rug beside his bed. He stretched
his hand out and down towards the dog’s coarse
pelt and stroked it affectionately. The reply could
hardly come by to-morrow night’s post. It would
probably come the morning after.

It did not come the morning after. The days
passed and the reply did not come. He threw
himself upon his letters at every post with burning
cheeks. The reply did not come.

The months passed by and he did not hear.
He could not believe the fellow could or dared
humiliate him so. It was unthinkable. The letter
had not reached him ; or it had been answered
and he had not received the reply.

A whole year passed by thus. He wrote another
letter dated April the twenty-ninth, like its
predecessor.

Dear Wage,

I wrote you a letter a year ago, on the same
day of this month. I would be grateful to you if
you would let me know whether you received it.

Yours sincerely,

Sidney Sharples.

A reply came by the evening post of the same
day.

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THE PURSUER

Dear Sir,

I received your letter of a year ago date. I
destroyed it as I have destroyed your communi-
cation received to-day.

Yours faithfully,

H. Wage.

Sidney Sharpies lifted the letter at its extreme
corner between finger and thumb and went over
to the fire with it. He dropped it among the coals
and pushed it as deep into the heart of the fire as
the tip of the poker could thrust it.

He rang the bell and Mrs. Carvill came in.

“ Take that food away,” he said. “ I won’t
eat anything.”

She saw his face was as pale as ash, but she
knew better than to ask him what ailed him.
“ Yes, sir,” she said, and got busy.

He went out and walked about the streets for
some time and then came in and went straight to
bed. He twisted the sheet into a gag and thrust
it into his mouth to prevent himself screaming.

He paid a lot of attention to his toilet next
morning. He went to the office looking very
spruce.

CHAPTER XI

I

Harry Wage came up to London towards
the latter end of nineteen-twenty. He took a
house in Baron’s Court, and travelled home
every evening between five-thirty and six from
the Underground Station at Mansion House.
There is always a great crowd at that hour,
thrusting its way towards the station along the
converging streets.

Quite a long time passed before Wace recalled
a fantasy that had almost prevented him from
accepting his job in London, the fantasy he had
had of a man coming up after him in the crowd,
now twenty yards behind him, now a yard
behind him, now less than a yard, his breath
hot upon his neck. The man was the man he
hated more than he had ever loved anything in
the world.

Wace had a lot to think of during those first
months — he had to dig himself into his job and
make his home fairly comfortable ; there was his
daughter, too, and her schooling. He had quite
a lot on his mind. Then, one evening, without

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124

any sort of warning, he felt the hot breath on
his neck. He turned round, though it was not
easy in that crowd, and scanned the faces
coming up behind him. None of them was in
the least familiar. He looked round again next
day, and again none of the faces was familiar.
He remembered to look round half a dozen
times during the next few weeks, and once or
twice he thought he saw the face that was so
hateful to him. Almost at once he realised it
was not. At length he decided he would not
look round again. The habit was becoming an
irritation to him.

Besides, he knew the fellow lived in Regent’s
Park. If he went home by Underground, he
went by another station. Possibly he left his
office in a car.

At the end of April nineteen twenty-two a
letter came to him from Sidney Sharpies.
He ignored it. Another came at the end of
April the following year. He was furious,
and he was frightened. The fellow was after
him again. What game was he up to ? Could
he possibly believe he would be such an
imbecile as to swallow the bait ? He would
see.

He replied to the second letter, a short sharp
note. He felt relieved. He did not try to convince
himself that this was the end of everything,

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125

though many months passed after this inter-
change of notes and still nothing happened.
But it cleared the air. He felt freer than he had
felt till now in London. He devoted himself with
more keenness to the business than he had
shown till now. He was making a success of
himself. Judy was a big girl now, in her last
year at school. She would be leaving soon.
She seemed happy enough, even though she was
a lonely girl, who did not make friends easily.
They went about to theatres and cinemas to-
gether.

When something happened at last, it was so
little it was hardly more than nothing. It was
with no thought of Sidney Sharpies at all that
Harry Wace turned his head one evening as he
was making his way towards the Mansion House
Underground Station. He thought he heard
someone call his name, so he turned his head.
Quite casually his eyes lit on Sharpies. Sharpies
was not even looking at him. It could not be
he that had called him, because he was too far
away to have reached him in so low a voice.
Besides, what reason had Sharpies to speak to
him at all ?

He peered among the faces nearer to him,
and saw none that was familiar. A little strange,
he thought ; and, after all, not so strange.
Probably it was some name similar to his that

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126

had been called. Or it had been some other
Wace, perhaps.

And was that really Sidney Sharpies, after
all ? How long ago was it since he had last set
eyes on Sharpies ? What ? It was twenty years
ago, wasn’t it ? Twenty years ago ! Then perhaps
that fellow wasn’t Sidney Sharpies ? Oh, yes it
was. He knew his face as well as if he had seen
it every day during all those twenty years.
In a sense, of course, he had.

Well then. It had happened now. He had
seen Sidney Sharpies again. The crowd moved
on, and he moved with it. He was through the
turnstile now. He was descending the steps now
towards the westbound platform.

Don’t look round. That’s what he wants you to do.
Exactly that. Don’t look round.

“ What an idiot I am ! ” he said to himself
angrily. “ What the hell shouldn’t I look round
for ? ”

He looked round. He could not see Sidney
Sharpies now. The staircase was jammed with
people. He was on the platform. It was possible
to move a little more easily.

Sidney Sharpies was on another platform,
probably. Or he hadn’t been there at all. Oh
yes, he had. That had quite definitely been
Sidney Sharpies. Was he somewhere behind
that clot of people near the bookstall ? And

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127

what if he was ? Why on earth shouldn’t the
fellow take a westbound train from Mansion
House Station if he felt like it ?

A train came in. It was not Wace’s train ;
it passed his station. A carriage door was open
a foot or two from his elbow. As the train moved
off, he made a sudden wild dash for the compart-
ment, and got inside hardly a second before the
guard banged the door to.

2

The same thing happened several times during
the next month or two. Wace was aware that
Sharpies lived in Regent’s Park. Now Mansion
House was not the most convenient station for
Regent’s Park. Then Sharpies made some other
journey between five- thirty and six every now
and again. Why shouldn’t he ? There was no
reason in the world why he should not. Once
or twice they were quite close up against each
other, but no sign of recognition passed between
them. Was there perhaps the faint shadow of a
smile on Sharpies’s face ? It was an illusion.
Wace decided he was incapable of seeing his
face without imagining the shadow of a smile
on it.

It was upsetting, of course. Wace could not
disguise from himself that these encounters —

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128

but you could not call them encounters — put
him out for a day or two on end. He became
surly. He did not have a pleasant word even
for Judy. She kept out of his way.

And then Sharpies turned up at Boulter’s
Chop-House in Dacey Court. When Wace was
not having a business-lunch, he always lunched
at Boulter’s. It was a quiet old-fashioned place,
though it was in the very heart of the city.
They did a good steak there and had a good
pint of beer on draught. He found Boulter’s
very restful after the insistent jabber of the
telephones all morning.

Sidney Sharpies turned up quite casually at
Boulter’s, one lunch-time, just a few minutes
after Wace had arrived. He turned up just as
casually as he made the Underground journey
from Mansion House now and again. The place
was divided into cubicles. He gave the waiter
his hat and coat, looked about indifferently
and placed himself in the cubicle facing the
one where Wace was already sitting, where, in
fact, he sat every time he lunched at Boulter’s.
It was a coincidence, Wace supposed. He did
badly with his lunch that day.

It might have been only a coincidence, but
Wace asked to have his cubicle changed next
day. In a corner of the Chop-House there
were four cubicles which just faced a wooden

THE PURSUER 129

partition. He asked to be given one of
these.

It was a pity, in a way. The new waiter was
less intelligent than the old one. And Sidney
Sharpies did not lunch at Boulter’s again. Not
for six weeks. When he came again, he occupied
the next cubicle to Wace’s. Somehow it was
more formidable to have the enemy invisible,
to know that rather less than half an inch of
wood separated you from him. For of course
it was quite clear now it was no coincidence
he had come to lunch at Boulter’s. Quite
clear.

When Sharpies came a third time, about ten
days later, and lunched at Boulter’s, rather
less than a foot or so away from him, Wace
realised that that was the last time he himself
would lunch there. It was infuriating. He had
liked Boulter’s. It had been restful. The food
agreed with him.

3

What could you do about it ? What in the
world was there you could do ? What was there
to prevent a man taking any journey by Under-
ground he wished to take, or having his lunch
where he chose to have it ? It was different
when he wrote you a letter, or two letters, to be
Ip

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130

exact. It was gratifying to ignore the first. It was
gratifying, in a different way, to reply to the
second.

But what could you do to a man weaving so
gossamer a web about you, that you didn’t even
need to breathe in order to break it, for the web
wasn’t woven at all ?

Next time you saw him could you go up and
smack his face or hit him with your walking-
stick ? It would be grotesque and humiliating.
Sharpies would enjoy that infinitely.

Besides, not only was Sharpies doing nothing
at all, but you didn’t know him and he didn’t
know you. That was what was so wrong and so
shocking about the two letters he wrote to you
and the one he forced out of you in return. It
was breaking the supreme rule of their ghostly
and inexorable game.

What could you do then ? Kill him ? It seemed
about the only thing to do.

4

The impalpable persecution continued. It was
almost more odious than the previous persecu-
tions that had culminated in some tangible
wickedness. Sidney Sharpies thrived on it. He
was beginning to look fat and prosperous. The
hair was going in the middle of his scalp. His

THE PURSUER

waistcoat began to bulge a little. He looked like
a well-groomed bachelor, on good terms with the
world and himself.

Harry Wace lost weight. His clothes began to
hang loosely on his bones. He looked like a man
who was going to the bad with drink. He did
not, as a matter of fact, drink at all, or anything
more than his usual night-cap. A violent tempta-
tion assailed him more than once to drink him-
self into oblivion, as he had done in an earlier
phase of his career, when he wanted to forget
a woman who had been stolen from him, and
a man who had stolen her.

But it would be odious to let that same man
score another and so gross a triumph. He remem-
bered with dismay the headaches that always
followed these drinking-bouts. His head ached
badly enough already. There was Judy to think
of, too. She was not having too gay a time, as it
was. He could not go into a train without get-
ting restive. Every time the train stopped and
fresh passengers got in, his hands trembled so
that his newspaper almost fell out of his hands.
He would be looking up every minute or two
to make sure the pursuer had not come in after
him.

He had once been a keen cinema-goer, but he
never went to the cinema now, not since a certain
evening in the New Gallery. He had been

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132

absorbed in a film that night, with Judy sitting
beside him, not quite so interested. She was wait-
ing for the shorter film, which was to follow. He
had been so absorbed he had not noticed that
somebody had moved along a vacant row to the
seat on the other side of him. When the lights
went up, he became aware that Sidney Sharpies
was sitting on his left hand. He made a violent
effort to master his horror, but it was too much
for him. He rose. “Judy,” he said to her harshly.
“ Are you coming ? ”

“ But daddy,” she complained, “ it’s the short
film I’ve come to see. Are you all right ? ”

“ I’ve never seen such nonsense,” he declared,
with a fierce attempt to seem at ease. “ You stay
if you like ! ” And even as he spoke, his mind
filled with a picture of the whole cinema emptied,
only those two sitting a foot away from each
other. He saw the other sidle into the seat he had
vacated. He saw his fingers writhe like snakes on
to the thigh of the girl beside him,

“ Come at once, do you hear ? ” he shouted.
She rose. She looked very miserable.

“ I’m sorry, Judy dear,” he said. The sweat
was pouring from his forehead. “ I’m sorry I
made you miss it, but ... I felt rather faint,” he
explained lamely.

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133

5

As time went on, there were more palpable
injuries. There were obstructions in business due
to some influence to which no name or shape
could be attached. Then, after he had put up for
a business men’s club on the persuasion of two
or three of his friends, he found himself black-
balled. He attempted to buy a house once. He
found himself forestalled and outbid. There was
one injury that cost him a good deal of his fortune.

That happened in the spring of nineteen
twenty-eight. He was a rich man at that time.
His position in business was at its zenith. His
Doomington partner, Hannan, had retired some
two years earlier and Wace had taken over from him
the controlling interest in the firm. It was a boom
time and Wace came in on it with a very useful
combination of flair and north-country caution.

A swindler, Brakeley by name, was the one
who actually brought him down. He disappeared
with considerable gains, when the transaction
was over. Rut the secret motor of the swindle was
Sidney Sharpies, who made not a penny out of
it. The part he had played was in no legal sense
criminal, but it was a pretty enough move in
a private game he had been playing for a good
many years.

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134

This was how it had worked. Sidney Sharpies
was in Mincing Lane. He had been approached
by this Brakeley, who stated he had a friend in
the Dutch Government. There was no doubt at
all that the friend existed. Brakeley confided after
due guarantees that the Dutch Government were
coming in at last on the restriction scheme. The
price of rubber would soar sky-high within a
couple of months. He proposed a deal in rubber
futures which would make enormous fortunes
for both of them.

It happened, however, that Sharpies was a
good deal better informed than even the rest of
Mincing Lane. He, too, had friends both in
Amsterdam and Malaya, whose information led
him to somewhat different conclusions. He gave
no inkling to Brakeley that he had seen through
his scheme. He regretted that his firm had too
many commitments on hand and suggested the
names of two or three firms that had been doing
big business lately along those lines. They were
outside brokers, too ; they were likelier to have
funds available on this scale. He suggested casu-
ally that Wace’s firm seemed as likely as any,
they had been doing particularly well lately. He
further implied that it would be useful to keep
the name of his own firm out of it, for it would
inspii e more confidence if it were imagined that
the offer had been made nowhere else.

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135

The offer was duly made to Wace and duly
accepted. Had it been made a month or two
earlier or later it would have been turned down.
Wace had been uniformly successful in a series of
ventures each just a little more speculative than
the last. Had another month or two gone by,
some minor failure, in the natural chances of
business, would have brought home to him his
fallibility. At any other moment than this
Sharpies would not have diverted the specula-
tion in his direction. Brakeley had, of course, a
good handful of forward contracts, which he
generously unloaded on Wace at a more than
optimistic figure. The degree of this optimism
became clear as soon as “ restriction ” once again
became a dream. Brakeley disappeared from
market circles. Wace was left for several months
to come paying sixpence for every threepence he
received. The sixpences were numerous.

It was not because he pieced together, with an
intuition equal to his enemy’s, the part he had
played in this affair, that Harry Wace deter-
mined to murder Sidney Sharpies. None of these
injuries precipitated the intention or the execu-
tion. He was aware that the murder to which he
was dedicated pursued and would culminate a
curve which had been decreed many years ago.

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136

It was to murder Sidney Sharpies he had come
to London. It was Sidney Sharpies himself who
had summoned him to London.

He lay tossing in his bed night after night. The
sweat of anguish was clammy on his forehead.
A moan like a dying child’s forced its way through
his clenched teeth. His daughter crept along the
passage to his room, and stood there for many
minutes. But she dared not invade that grief and
terror. She had no efficacy there. She crept back
like a forlorn ghost to her own room.

6

“ No,” said Wace, pushing his plate away.
“ I won’t eat anything to-night.”

“ You said that last night,” his daughter
complained.

“ Yes.”

“ Shall I ask Mrs. Williams to make you some-
thing light, an omelette or something ? ”

“ No. I’ll have a brandy and soda. I’ll take it
into the sitting-room.”

“ Let me take it for you, daddy.”

“ Thank you, Judy. You’re a good girl.”

They went into the sitting-room. She handed
him a cigarette.

“ You, Judy ? ”

“ No, thanks. I won’t smoke.”

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137

They sat in silence for some time.

At last she spoke. She unclenched her fists and
her breath came short and sharp, like somebody
going out for the first time into the night and the
cold, in a dangerous country.

“ Is it going to go on like this always ? ”

“ Like what ? ” he asked suspiciously. “ Like
what ? ”

“ You look so wTetched. You don’t eat any-
thing.”

“ What can I do ? ”

“ Are you going to build up your business again
to where it wais ? ”

“ I’ve lost interest in my business.”

“ Daddy ! ”

“ Yes.”

” Why shouldn’t we go away somewhere ? ”

He stopped and looked at her. He said noth-
ing for two full minutes. Then he broke the
silence.

“ Do you really want to know why ? ” he
asked.

“ If you want me to,” she answered, her voice
hardly above a whisper.

Again one minute and another passed before
he said a word. Then once more he asked : “ Shall
I tell you why ? ” This time she made no reply.

Still for a long time he considered the matter.
Then at last he said :

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138

“ Because he’d go after me, wherever I went.”

The silence was so intense and so prolonged
they looked like waxworks, placed by another
hand in their two chairs.

“ Well,” he said at length. “ Why don’t you
say anything ? ”

“ What can I say ? ” she murmured. Her face
was deathly pale.

“ I have an enemy,” he said.

“ I know,” she murmured.

“ How do you know P ” He suddenly started
in his chair. “ Has anybody said anything ? ”
He looked at her with burning eyes. “ Anybody
at all ? ”

“ Nobody at all.”

“ How do you know ? ”

“ I’ve always known. Even in Doomington.
It’s been worse here. In the train, at the cinema,
wherever we went.” Her voice was quite toneless.
She did not raise her eyes from the floor.

“ Daddy, daddy,” she said. “ What are you
going to do ? ”

“ You know what I’m going to do,” he said
sombrely.

“ No, no,” she shrieked suddenly. She rose and
stretched her arms out above her head. “No, I
don’t know anything ! Don’t you see ? ” She
went across to him and held his head between her
hands. “ It’s got to be like that ! ”

THE PURSUER 139

“ Yes, Judy. I see. You don’t know anything.
It’s got to be like that ! ”

7

Sometimes he neglected his office for days on
end. He left his clerks to look after things. He
mooched about in old clothes. She had no idea
where he went.

Now and again he came in long after midnight.
She dared not ask herself what he might be doing,
what he might already have done. She waited
till he had gone in the morning and then pounced
on the newspaper. But, with the newspaper in
her hand, a sudden terror descended on her.
She dared not unfold it, for fear of the hideous
news it might contain. She opened it at length
and her eye passed feverishly from column to
column. Then she folded it again. Not yet. She
could not see there was any news yet to perturb
her.

She tried hard to believe sometimes that it
was all a nightmare. She had, somehow, en-
tangled herself, too, in an illusion. There was no
pursuer at all. Nothing would happen to en-
danger her. She picked up the morning newspaper
indifferently. But not many days later she might
take some journey with him. From the way his
hands twitched and his head turned this way and

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140

that, she felt she dared not allow herself to be so
comforted — if it was comfort to think a mere
spectre so appalled him. Oh no. It was something
more solid than a spectre that pursued him and
taunted him and bade him strike.

It was long after midnight, one night, and he
had not yet come in. She was almost dead with
apprehension. She went up to bed, but she could
not sleep. She switched her light on, but she
could not read. At last she heard the key turned
in the front door. She heard his feet, coming up
the stairs. They stopped at his own door, then
they hesitated. Then they came further along the
passage. They stopped at her door. He knocked.
He had something to tell her. What was it he
had to tell her at this hour ? Her heart stopped
beating. She could not bring herself to say come
in. She heard him move back again along the
passage. She jumped out of bed and ran to the
door and opened it.

“ Yes, daddy ? ” she called out. “ What is it ? ”
Her eyes were round with fright.

“ I saw your light on,” he said heavily. “ Then
when you didn’t answer, I thought you’d fallen
asleep.”

“ Is there ... is there anything you want to
say ? ”

“ I thought I’d ... I thought I’d like to have
a word with you.”

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141

The colour came slowly back into her cheeks
again. “ Come in. I’ll switch the stove on. Sit
down in this chair, daddy.”

“ Get back into bed again, Judy.”

“ All right. You look . . . Oh daddy, you look
so tired ! ”

“ No. I’m all right.”

“ Do you want anything ? Would you like to
smoke ? ”

“ No.”

“ All right. Is there anything I can do ? ”

“ No, Judy, thanks. I just wanted to say some-
thing.”

She waited for him. He must take his own time.

“ It’s this.” He hesitated again, then he went
on. “ I don’t know how it will be. You know
what I mean ? No, Judy, no. I’m sorry. You
don’t know what I mean.”

Her eyes filled with tears. “ I do, oh I do.
Daddy, is it possible ? Any other way ? ”

He looked wretchedly into the red coils of the
electric stove. “ We won’t talk about it, Judy.
That’s not what I came to talk about.”

“ All right,” she whispered.

“ What I mean is this. It may be all right, or
it may not. You can’t tell. I intend to come back,
after. You won’t know. Nobody’ll know.”

After. She had to bite hard on her tongue to
prevent herself screaming. He seemed conscious

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142

of some emotion of dismay or horror that had
been generated within her. “ I’ll go now,” he
said. She saw the unspeakable loneliness in his
eyes. “ Don’t go,” she whispered. “ Say what
you’ve come to say.”

“ Only this. I may come back. Also, I may not
come back.”

“ Where’ll you go ? ”

“ I don’t know. Abroad somewhere. My pass-
port’s all right. People won’t connect things,
you know. You’ll be able to say : It was just
his nerves. He simply had to get away. You
see ? ”

“ Yes, I see.”

“ I just thought I’d like to say this. I’ve got
quite a lot of money in bank-notes. But I might
be in a bit of a hole some time.” He was fiddling
about in the carpet with one toe, awkwardly,
like a school-boy. “ I want to hand over some
more to you. You’d help me out, if it came to it,
wouldn’t you ? ”

She did not answer. She fixed him with her
eyes. “ Listen, daddy,” she said. “ Are you
listening ? ”

“ Yes, I’m listening.”

“ I don’t think you remember. A long time
ago — I think I was eleven or twelve — I made a
promise to you.”

“ Yes.”

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143

“ It was after my mother went off, for the

second time.”

“ Oh yes.”

“ Do you remember ? ”

“ I don’t think I do.”

“ I said I’d look after you. I meant it. And I
mean it now. I’ll look after you.”

He got up from his chair. He was blushing
violently. He turned his back on her. “ Of course
I remember,” he said. He went along to the
door and still with his back to her he added,
“ You won’t be such a fool ! I’ll look after
myself, if I’ve got to.”

“ All right,” she said quietly.

8

He had decided to shoot him. That was the
cleanest and neatest way. He hung about the
public-houses in the East India Dock Road and
picked up a revolver without much trouble. He
set himself to find out all he could about Sharp-
ies’s habits in his home on the Regent’s Park
Canal. He was very patient. Time did not matter.
There was a public-house on the further side of
the canal. It had a big room on the first floor
where they had free-and-easy sing-songs now and
again. He gleaned a fact or two of great import-
ance from that point of vantage. He learned that.

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*44

whenever Sharpies was at home, he never failed
to take his dog out into the garden, for a run after
dinner, at nine o’clock. It was always nine
o’clock to the dot. Sharpies was becoming quite
a pernickety old gentleman. It wasn’t quite the
garden he took the dog into. It had too much
rockery and flower-bed and too little lawn for the
dog to stretch his legs properly. He opened a gate
in the iron railings and went out into a coarse
strip of grass between the garden and the canal.
On one side the garden and the strip of grass were
bordered by the high wall of a warehouse that
went straight down to the canal-bank. There was
nothing to be done on that side. There was a
warehouse on the other side, too, but it was
conveniently separated from Sharpies’s house by
a narrow alley. On this side a wooden fence
continued the line of the garden down to the
canal bank. The fence was finished off with a
tangle of barbed wire. It was not impossible to
get rid of the wire and worm one’s way round the
end of the fence into the strip of grass where
Sharpies took his dog for the nightly run.

9

Fog was the essence of the matter. There must
be fog that night. He waited through the spring
and summer days. He thought the time had come

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145

one day towards the end of October, but a wind
arose that evening and the fog moved. It was
more mist than fog.

A few days later, as he came home from the
office, he was startled by a loud report behind his
ear. “ Sorry, guv’nor ! ” a voice said. He turned
round. A couple of errand-boys were having a
lark with fire-works. Of course, Guy Fawkes’
Day was coming. November the Fifth.

“Not at all ! ” he smiled magnanimously.
“ Go and buy yourselves some more ! ” He gave
them sixpence. The more fire-works went off the
next few days the better. He would shortly send
one off too, he promised himself, if the weather
got a little thicker.

He was there in good time on the evening of
November the Fifth, about twenty to nine, not
too early. The conditions were admirable. It had
been just foggy enough to make it rather difficult
to find his way here. It was getting thicker now
every minute. On the other side of the canal,
beyond the public-house, small boys were letting
off fire-works. You only guessed they were small
boys. You could see nothing clear even though
there was a lamp there. There was no lamp on
this side at all, no light except two shafts that
escaped from the curtains of Sharpies’s dining-
room, that had not been properly drawn to-
night.

Kp

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146

There was first that tangle of barb.ed wire at
the end of the fence to deal with. It had been put
up to prevent boys working their way round to the
strip of grass that separated the house from the
canal. He took out of his breast-pocket the pliers
that he had bought many months ago in a street-
market. Then he snipped through the strands of
barbed wire till the heap lay loose. Very carefully
with his gloved hands he edged the stuff towards
the water where it sank soundlessly. Then he
worked his way round the end of the fence till
he found himself in the territory he had long
planned to attain. The ground sloped down
irregularly the last few feet towards the water’s
edge. He lay full length, waiting.

He did not need to wait long. He heard the
click of the French windows as Sharpies pushed
them in front of him to step on to the lawn.
“ Come on, now, Jock ! There’s a good dog ! ”
The dog seemed to hesitate. “Yes, a nasty night,
isn’t it ? ” agreed Sharpies. The dog made up his
mind to come. As Sharpies reached the garden-
path, there was a loud report on the further side
of the canal. The dog started barking furiously.

“ That’s all right, Jock ! Don’t worry ! ” said
Sharpies, and bent down to reassure him.
“ Please to remember the Fifth of November ! ”
He came forward a few yards. “ Besides,” he
went on, “ Mr. Wace is waiting for us, just by the

SUER

T

147

canal there. he won’t shoot ! He’s

frightened ! ”

A blackness heaved itself up from the shelving
bank. There was another loud report. The dog
barked furiously again, and went on barking,
but no hand was put out to quieten him.

CHAPTER XII

I

Wage fl UNG himself to earth again, then
withdrew his body at an angle towards the end
of the fence. He was in complete control of him-
self He worked round the end of the fence quite
as competently as before. He was standing on his
feet now, in the alley between the fence and the
warehouse. He turned and flung the revolver
into the canal.

He was in complete control of himself Oh no.
Sharpies had been wrong this time if he had never
been wrong before. He was not frightened, not
frightened. He put one foot before the other
steadily. He was almost out of the alley now,
almost in the street now.

Sharpies had known. What had Sharpies
known ? Had he kept watch to-night at this small
window here on the right ? Had Sharpies known
the other nights, too, when he had gone mooching
along the opposite side of the canal into the
public-house there ?

The important thing was to go steady. He was
out in the street now. What a good thing it was

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149

it was so foggy. Somewhere down the road some
more fire- works went off. A dog barked. The other
dog was still barking out there at the back of the
house. He would probably bark for some time.
Nobody takes any notice when a dog barks on
Guy Fawkes’ Night.

It was fool-proof. Nothing could happen.
Nobody could know. Nobody connected their
two names in any way, nobody ever had. They
had both played the game, hadn’t they ? That
was the one thing they’d both stuck to, always,
from the beginning. They’d never let anyone in
on this, had they ?

Even to-night. Sharpies hadn’t said a word to
anybody, or written down a word for anybody to
look at, in case something happened to him.
Had he ?

The great thing to do was just to go steady.
Steady. Like this. How easy it was. Left, right.
Left, right. Easy. See ?

Then he heard the footsteps of the pursuer
coming up after him, coming up after him.
Quite clearly he heard the running footsteps.
His whole body collapsed into flight. He was a
small boy. He was running like mad down
Blenheim Road. His heart was icy with fear. The
other small boy was wearing a blue silk bow. He

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150

had green eyes. He was smiling as he ran, smiling.
The other boy could catch him up if he wanted to,
but he did not want to. He let him run on and
on, blindly, wildly, into the fog.

“ ’Ere you, what the ’ell are you up to ? ” a
sharp voice asked him. He had edged someone into
the gutter. He said not a word. The breath was
labouring in his throat. The fog was choking him.
He had not the least idea where he was. He did
not care. He ran and ran through the steep
fog.

“ Hello ! What’s the game ? ” A hand reached
out and caught him by the sleeve. It was a
policeman, looming up out of the fog. Desperately
he tore his arm free, and started to run again. A
whistle sounded in the fog behind him. Another
sounded somewhere on the left, and another
again. He thrust his head low, and ran till he
seemed to have come to a corner somewhere.
He turned round that corner and round another
corner. He ran on and on. He was now out of the
zone of the whistling.

Stop, you fool ! Slop ! There's no one coming up
after you. He's dead ! Don't you realise that ! He's
dead at last ! If you don't get yourself under control
again, you' re lost, damned, done for. There now. Walk.
Walk ! No need to run. That's right. Easy, now, easy.

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I5I

Ten seconds later he was running again, the
pursuing feet coming up behind him, closer and
closer behind him.

2

His efforts to fit the key into the keyhole were
ludicrous, like a drunken man’s. By the time he
had turned the key, Judy was already downstairs,
she was hastening towards the door.

“ Daddy, what is it ? ”

He looked up at her through red-rimmed eyes.
“ Oh Judy ! ” he gasped, as if he had not ex-
pected her to be in that house, as if he had
expected her to be a hundred miles away.

“ What is it, daddy ? ”

He was suddenly aware the door was still
open behind him. He turned round and thrust
it t© violently. Then he turned again, and stood
there, tottering.

She looked at him. He had lost his hat. His
collar was soaked with sweat. His breath came
in short gasps. The thing had happened. The
inevitable thing she had so feared had happened.
She assured herself fiercely she did not know what
that thing was, any more than she knew who was
involved in it. But he had come for her, though
he had come for her blindly, not knowing where
his footsteps led him. She would not fail him.

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“ Come upstairs at once ! ” she demanded
sharply. “ I’ll make you a hot drink ! ”

“ No ! ” he brought out. “ No ! I’ve come
for . . .” He stood there, wondering what he had
come for. “ Oh, I’ve come for my passport ! ”
he said.

“ All right. We’ll talk about that soon. Come
upstairs.”

He stood there, hesitating. She took him by the
arm and led him upstairs. His weight almost
slipped from out of her arm, down the stairs
again. She got him into his room.

“ Now sit down there ! ” she ordered. “ I’ll
make you that hot drink ! You’re all right now ! ”

There was a desk in the room where he kept
his papers. He stumbled towards the desk. “ I
want my passport ! ” he said, “ and my money ! ”

“ I think they’re on you ! ” she said. She went
over and tapped the right-hand breast-pocket of
his coat. “ That’s it, isn’t it ? ” He put his hand
up against the pocket. “ Yes, that’s it ! ” he said.
He smiled stupidly. Then he opened two or three
of the top buttons of his waistcoat. There was a
pocket there on the left, inside. His fingers felt
for something. “ Yes, the money’s there, too ! ”
he muttered.

“ I’ll bring my spirit stove in, and boil some
hot water. I’ll go and get some whisky and a
lemon.”

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153

He tried to get up again. “ I tell you I’ve got
to go now ! ” he whimpered. “ I’ve got to go ! ”
He passed his hand through his soaked hair.

“ Where’ll you go ? ”

He looked at her from under his eyelids. “ You
know where I’m going,” he said, surlily.

“ I’m going, too ! ” she said.

He straightened himself in the chair, his fingers
stiffening on its arm. “ You’re not ! ” he cried.
“ You mustn’t ! You can’t ! ”

“ Oh yes I am ! ” she said. “ You’re in a
dreadful state ! I’ve got to look after you ! ”

“ But, Judy, don’t you see ? You mustn’t
come ! I must get out of the house, now, at
once ! ”

“ Daddy, listen here ! You must be sensible !
You’re going away ! I’ll see to that ! But I don’t
see why it should».tbe to-morrow. Must it ?
Wouldn’t it be better if we went off in a day or
two ? Don’t forget ! Nobody knows ! Nothing’s
happened ! ”

He put his head in his hands. “ No ! no ! ” he
cried convulsively. “ No ! I want to go now, this
very moment ! Do you hear ? ” His voice rose in
a shrill crescendo.

“ You can’t ! ” she said firmly. “ That would
be absolutely foolish. You can’t go to-night.
There’s no point in it. We’ll go by the first train
to-morrow. It’s all quite straightforward. I’ll

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154

be able to explain it quite easily. You’re ill, you’ve
taken a turn for the worse. So I’ve decided to
take you away at once. You see ? All as if nothing
had happened. Nothing has happened. You
understand ? ”

He was sobbing into his hands. The tears
coursed heavily down between his fingers.

She went over to him and pressed his head
against her bosom. “ Nothing has happened,” she
repeated softly. “ Nothing has happened. I’ll get
you that drink now, daddy,” she murmured.

CHAPTER XIII

I

Judy held out the passports to the man at the
barrier. The man handed them back without
looking up. They walked up the platform to the
carriage where their porter had found seats for
them.

“ There you are, daddy,” she said to him
easily. “ You see ? It’s perfectly simple. No fuss
at all.”

They took their seats in corners facing each
other on the platform side of the carriage. “ Are
those other corners taken ? ” he asked.

“ Yes,” she said. “ They have reserve tags on.
Don’t worry, daddy.”

He put his coat-collar up to his ears and
wrapped the lower part of his face round with
his scarf. He could not bear the transparency of
the window beside his face. His fingers fumbled
upwards towards the blind.

“ You can’t, daddy ! You can’t ! ” she im-
plored him. “ It’ll make people think you want
to hide yourself ! Put your scarf down ! ”

“ All right ! ” He got up from his corner and

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156

walked through the carriage to the corridor. He
stood at a window there, studying the rails and
signals. Their fellow-passengers got in, a couple
of maiden ladies. He twisted his head cautiously
round to examine them. They did not seem to
add to his fears. A moment or two before the
train moved off, Judy remembered she had no
reading matter. She bought a handful of
magazines and newspapers.

The whistle sounded. The train drew out of the
station. Wace came back to his corner-seat again.
Judy smiled at him. “ All right ? ” her eyes asked
him. He nodded. She sat there looking at him for
some five minutes or so. He looked very pale and
haggard ; his eyelids fluttered down over his eyes ;
his head jerked once or twice. He was falling
asleep ; it would be excellent if he got some
sleep.

She put the magazines down beside her and
picked up one of the newspapers. It rustled and
crackled as she opened it out. Suddenly she felt
her father’s hands fasten round her wrists.

“ Put it away ! ” he said fiercely. “ Do you
hear ? Put it away ! ”

She tried to steady him with her eyes. “ Yes,
daddy ! ” she said calmly. “ It is a rag. I didn’t
ask for it ! ” She folded the paper and put it
behind her. “ The Times is all light, isn’t it ? ”

“ Ye-es.”

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157

She did not read The Times long, either. She
picked up a magazine and skimmed through the
pictures. “ Would you like one, daddy ? ” She
handed him another magazine, and he took it.
But it soon slipped between his fingers.

Some minutes later she spoke to him again.
“ Shall I ring for a drink ? Are you all right ? ”

“ No ! I don’t want a drink ! I’m all right ! ”

How could he explain to her tliat it was not
wheels he heard, but the sound of feet remorse-
lessly pursuing ? Dub-a-dub, the feet went,
dub-a-dub, dub-a-dub.

The rhythm of the engines of the Channel
steamer was identical, dub-a-dub, dub-a-dub,
the feet, the running feet. He groaned in his
misery. “ He is more alive than he has ever been
before.”

2

She had been to Paris a year or so ago with one
of her friends, but he had never been. They had
only booked to Paris. There had been no time to
see further than that.

“ Well, daddy,” she said. “ It’s going to be
fun in Paris. You’ll love it.” This was on the
journey from Boulogne.

“ Yes,” he said. The word was merely a sound,
because she seemed to expect some sort of a
sound from him.

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158

“ How long would you like to stay in Paris ? ”
“ What ? ”

“ How long would you like to stay in Paris ? ”
He took the words separately, and then labori-
ously assembled them again. Their meaning
seeped slowly into his brain.

“ Stay in Paris ? ” he asked. His speech was
indistinct. He did not bring his lips together
properly as he formed his words. “ I don’t want
to stay in Paris.”

She looked round the other people in the
carriage swiftly. They were all French, she
thought. But possibly some of them spoke Eng-
lish. She would not force the matter now. “ No,
daddy, of course not,” she said easily. “ We want
to get to the sunshine as soon as possible.”

The attendant came round to say that lunch
was being served. “ You’d best come along and
have something to eat,” she said.

“ I don’t want anything ! ”

“ You ought to try ! ”

“ No, Judy, I won’t go in there ! ”

He wasn’t only not hungry. She saw he couldn’t
bear the idea of sitting at close quarters with
other people. He would not be able to manage
the implements. His hands had been trembling
throughout the whole journey.

“ All right ! ” she resigned herself.

“ You go ! ” he said. The thought for her

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159

entered briefly into the profound gloom of his
preoccupation with himself. It was extinguished
almost at once. “ If you like ! ” he added
wretchedly.

She was extremely hungry. “ No ! ” she said,
“ I’ll stay. I’m not hungry.” She had slipped a
bar of chocolate into her bag. “ This is all I
want ! ”

Dub-a-dub, the feet went, dub-a-dub, dub-a-dub.

On their arrival in Paris, she had their bags
put into the luggage-office. “ Let’s go and
stretch our feet,” she said. “ We’ll have some
coffee and some croissants at a cafe near the
station, shall we, and we’ll make up our minds
what we’re going to do.”

There was no fog in Paris. The smell of the
place invigorated her. It was cold, but there
were people sitting outside the cafes, at small
tables near the braziers. The taxis hooted
and swerved. A small boy in his smock walked
along the boulevard with a basket from which
projected half a dozen thin loaves of bread a
yard long. He walked as casually as if this were
some small village in the country. A girl stood
on the rounded curb, carefully pencilling her
eyebrows with the aid of a small mirror. The
clean baby on a hoarding the length of a block

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i6o

of buildings exhorted the world to use Savon
Cadum.

“ Well, daddy, will this do ? ” She had stopped
at one of the cafes on the boulevard.

“ No,” he said. “ Can’t you find one in a
side street somewhere ? We mustn’t be long,”
he added.

They went down one side street and down
another.

“ Is this all right ? ”

“ Yes. This will do. No, Judy, no. Let’s go
further in, away from the street.”

“ Daddy. We’re in Paris. We’re in a side
street off a side street. Nobody knows us.”

“ I know,” he said. “ I know. I want to go
to that table down there.”

She sighed. “ All right.” She ordered some
coffee. There were some hard-boiled eggs and
sandwiches on the zinc counter. She ordered
these too.

“ We’re not going to stay long,” he said
suspiciously.

“ We’re all right for time, daddy. We’ve got
all the time in the world.”

“ Oh no, we haven’t. When does the next
train go ? ”

Where ? ”

“ )\.nywhere. To the south. As far away as
possibi'^*”

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l6l

“ You mean Marseilles ? ”

“ Yes, Marseilles, then,”

“ Wouldn’t you like to stay in Paris for a
day or two ? In some little hotel, somewhere.
We could find one where tourists never go.”

“ I want to move on,” he wailed. “ It’s too
near. You needn’t come, if you don’t want to.”

She saw that there was nothing to be done
with him now. His nerves were shot to pieces.
There was nothing at all to do but move on.
“ Of course we’ll move on,” she said. “ There’s
a darling, get something inside you.”

“ That man, behind the counter. Is he listen-
ing ? ”

“ Oh daddy, of course he isn’t. I’ll have to
shake you if you talk so foolishly. Get on with
your coffee.”

They finished their meal. “ Well,” he said.
“ What about the next train to Marseilles.”

“ We’ll go to the station and find out.”

He rose as if to accompany her. Then he sat
down again. “ No,” he said. “ You go your-
self. I don’t like it near the station. I’ll stay
here.”

“ Very well then.”

“ Come back as soon as you can,” he called
out after her.

i 62

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3

“ Look ! ” she cried. “ There’s the Mediter-
ranean ! Did you ever see such a lovely colour ! ”
“ It’s lovely ! ” he said. “ It’s lovely.” Sud-
denly she found he was crying. The tears ran
steadily down his cheeks. He felt about for his
handkerchief.

“ Daddy ! ” she whispered. “ Don’t ! You
mustn’t ! Not here ! Those people are looking !
I’ll put you to bed in Marseilles and keep you
there for a day or two. You’ll be all right when
you’ve had some rest.”

“ I heard his feet coming up after me all
night long.”

“ You must pull yourself together. Nobody’s
coming after you, nobody. You’ve got away.
Do you understand ? We’re going to be all right.
Look ! Those must be olive groves ! Do you see ?
Then we’ll make enquiries. We might find a
little pension somewhere. What’s that you say ?
Not a pension ? No ? Oh no ! Of course not.
We’ll see. We’ve got time. The most important
thing is a couple of days in bed in Marseilles.
We should be in in under an hour.”

She drove him straight to a hotel in Marseilles
and gave him a sleeping-draught. He slept for

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most of the day. She went out in the ev
for half an hour or so in the Cannebi^re. W.
she came back, she found him in her room.

“ What’s the matter, daddy ? I’m so sorry.
I thought I needed some air. I was only out
for half an hour.”

“ Are the tourist-ofhces closed ? ”

“ Yes, daddy. Oh you’re not going to start
worrying again. You mustn’t. It’s silly.”

“ I want to get away in a ship. Judy, do let
me get away. I’ll be all right, I know I will,
if we get over to the other side somewhere.
Find out, Judy, when the next ship sails to
Africa. It’ll be all right if we get to Africa.”

She dropped her hands to her sides helplessly.
“ Perhaps you’re right,” she said. She felt very
tired. “ The crossing will do you good. And it’ll
all be so different there. I’ll go and inquire at
a tourist agency the first thing to-morrow morn-
ing.

“ You’re a darling,” he said. He made for
the door of the room.

“ Would you like to dress and come out for
an hour or two ? ”

“ No, I’ll stay and watch the people through
the curtain. You’re a good girl, Judy. You go
out if you want to.”

“ Can I ? ”

“ Don’t stay too long.”

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162

. boat was sailing next day to Algiers. He
^emed almost gay when the ship weighed
anchor and they moved away from the harbour-
side.

“ This is fine ! ” he said. “ This is fine ! ”
He sniffed the evening breeze keenly. “ It’s
going to be fine, over there, on the other side.”

CHAPTER XIV

I

For several weeks Wace was fairly happy
in Algiers. He seemed comforted by the thought
that he had put Europe a sea’s width behind
him. He found a little cafe in the upper town,
built up against the wall of the Kasbah, and he
seemed to draw assurance from the fact that
no one could enter the cafe from behind him.
From where he sat, he commanded the city
and the port and the bay. He drank innumerable
cups of native coffee and once or twice playfully
put to his lips a pipe of kif. ^ndy looked on watch-
fully and with approval. She did not think it
would be injurious if he dulled his nerves a
little by a tug at the opiate stuff now and again.
He was quite happy to go up to the cafe on his
own and sit there for hours while Judy wandered
about the town.

One day she returned for him in the late
afternoon as had been arranged, and she found
him gone. A panic seized her. He had heard the
footsteps again. He had seen the shadow. She
had a wild impulse to go tearing through the

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166

narrow streets calling his name. But she told
herself she must not be a fool. He had felt unwell
and had gone back to the hotel. That was all
there was to it.

She went back to the hotel at once and found
she had been right and wrong. He was there
right enough, but he had locked the door of
the room. He had spread a game of patience
before him but had gone no distance with it.

“ What on earth’s the matter ? ” she said.
“ Why on earth weren’t you at the cafe when
I came for you ? ”

“ I’m not going to that cafe again.”

“ Why not ? ”

“ Oh it doesn’t matter.”

“ Come now, daddy. Why not ? ”

“ A boy came to the cafe and called old
Hussein to come down to him.”

“ Hussein ? ”

“ Yes, that’s the man who keeps it.”

“ Well ? ”

“ So Hussein went down and talked to some-
body. Down in the street. A stranger. I think
he was English.”

“ Are you sure he was English ? Did you hear ?
Hussein doesn’t know any English. You re-
member, we tried him ? ”

“ The man looked English.”

“ He might have been anything. And what’s

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wrong with Hussein talking to a stranger, to an
Englishman for that matter ? ”

Wace’s jaw set firm. “ I’m not going back to
that cafe again.”

“ All right, daddy. If you don’t want to.
We’ll find another cafe.”

But that wasn’t enough. They had to find
another hotel, too. They moved out to the
suburb of Mustapha, and were there only four
or five days. They took the train eastward to
Constantine. The dark wild hills of the inland
country seemed somehow to soothe him. It was
as if he thought those sheer walls of rock were
too steep for foot to follow and there was not
sustenance, even for a ghost, in pastures as arid
as these. They stayed for two months in Con-
stantine, He would sit in the cafes looking down
on the ravines which engirdled the town. Who
would dare follow him here ? One day she saw
him thrust through an open window a pot of
flowers that stood on a ledge there. They heard
the thing smash on the rocks far below. He
turned to her and smiled.

But the smile went soon. The fear came back
into his eyes again. They were not alone when
they went along the rock ramparts in the cool

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1 68

of the evening. They were not alone when they
went back again to their hotel.

So they went on to Tunis. It was in Tunis he
called her over to him one day. “ Listen, Judy,”
he said. “ I’ve been thinking about you.”

“ That’s fine,” she replied jocularly. “ Aren’t
we a devoted pair ! ”

“ I don’t think it’s fair to you,” he replied
sombrely.

“ What do you mean ? ”

“ I’m not going to let you waste your life like
this.”

“ Don’t be silly ! ” Her voice was quite sharp.

“ I want you to leave me. I’ve made up my
mind.” He spoke with some pretence of assurance.
“You can go back to England, if you like.” His
voice was less assured.

“ I won’t go back to England, or anywhere
else. You know perfectly well I won’t.”

“ I’ve told you I want you to go back,” he said
tiredly. “ All right. I’ll read my book, now.”
She left him to his book. She was touched and a
little disturbed that he should be thinking of her
again in these terms. In small matters he had
been thoughtful from the beginning.

Three days later she came back from a brief
excursion into the bazaars to find out that he had
packed up his bag and had left the hotel. He had
left a message at the desk to say the lady would

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ibg

know where he had gone. “ Oh yes,” she said
casually. “ I thought it was to-morrow he was
going.”

She realised immediately that any idea of
going out after him to find him was useless and
dangerous. He might have doubled on his tracks
westward back to Constantine, but she thought
that was improbable. He might have gone south-
ward towards Sousse and Sfax. He might have
taken a ticket at one of the shipping offices in any
direction at all. That would not have been too
hard to find out, but she thought it unwise to
draw attention to him by instituting inquiries.
On the whole she thought it likeliest that he had
gone to some other hotel in the town. He would
probably keep to his room for days, perhaps
for a week or two. Then he would come back
again.

Ten days of extreme anxiety followed. How
could he possibly get on without her ? If a sudden
panic descended on him, what might he not do
to himself? Ought she not to get in touch with
some private detective agency here ? Not that,
above all. He would be more than morbidly
sensitive to the faintest hint that he was being
shadowed or inquired after.

She kept herself under control, though it was
difficult. On the morning of the tenth day after
his disappearance, there was a knock at her door.

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170

It was not her breakfast. They had already
brought it to her. She knew who it was.

“ Come in,” she said quietly.

“ Good morning, Judy,” he said. He looked
very pale. “ It’s very good of you to be here
still.”

“ What did you expect ? ”

“ I’m glad you’re here,” he said. “ I was very
frightened, sometimes.”

“ You’d best have a good hot bath,” she said.
“ They hadn’t any hot baths where you were ? ”
“ No.”

“ All right then. We’ll go out to lunch when
you’re ready, shall we ? ”

“ Yes, Judy, thank you.” He was very subdued.

They made an excursion next day alongside
the flamingo-haunted lagoon to La Goulette and
two or three miles further, to Carthage and its
ruins. The ruins did not stir his sullen imagina-
tion, but the flamingoes delighted him. He
chuckled with pleasure. A flush came back into
his cheeks again. He seemed like someone about
to take a turn for the better after a long illness.
There was a serenity in the way he sat back that
night, after dinner, over his coffee. He asked for a
cigar, too. It was becoming urgent to say one or
two things to him, but she thought it would-be

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I7I

unkind to invade this poor mood of quietness,
which came upon him so rarely. She spoke to
him the following evening.

“ Are you all right for money, daddy ? ”

He smiled at her slyly. “ That’s all right. I saw
to all that. We can go on for a long time as we’re
going on now.”

“ The house is locked up, you know.”

“ Yes.”

“ Would you like me to get Mrs. Williams back
some time ? You won’t want to be travelling
always, will you ? ”

All the colour left his cheeks. He put his hand
before his mouth. “ Hush ! For God’s sake, be
quiet ! Don’t mention names ! ”

“ But, daddy, there’s a hundred thousand Mrs.
Williamses. All over Wales ”

He got up from his chair. “ I’m going ! ” he
cried. “ You’re bad to me ! ” His lips were
quivering.

She felt that now, having gone so far, she must
go a little further. She rose, too, and put her hands
on his shoulders. “ Sit down, daddy ! ” she bade
him. “ Sit down ! ” He doubled up limply into
his chair. “ Listen ! Nobody can hear in this
room ! I wouldn’t talk if there was the slightest
chance of anybody catching a word. If you’re
happy travelling about from place to place, I’m
happy, too. Most girls I know would give their

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172

eyes for the chance. But I want to make sure it’s
the best thing for you. It might be perfectly all
right for us to go back to England. We can’t know
unless we make some effort to find out.”

All the colour left his cheeks. His lips were
almost as pale. “ I can’t go back to England ! ”
he whimpered. “ I can’t ! Leave me alone,
Judy ! ”

“ Daddy ! ” She went over to him and sat on
the arm of his chair. She passed her hand gently
over his forehead. “ Daddy, darling, I’m here, see.
I’m beside you ! What are you frightened of?
You were so clever, weren’t you ? You know you
were.”

He made no reply.

“ Yes, daddy ? ” she insinuated gently. “ If
you’d only let me know what you’re frightened of.
Is it people ? Is it something less than people ? ”
She went on playing with his hair, one arm
round his shoulder. Then slowly she became
aware there was too much stiffness in the head,
the whole body was rigid. She whipped round
and faced him. His eyes were staring straight in
front of him. They looked like opaque glass balls.
Only in his fingers was there any movement at all.
They dithered faintly like moths half dead. She
seized his head and chafed it between the palms
of her hands. She snatched the flowers out of a
vase and sprinkled the water on him sharply.

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“ Daddy ! Daddy ! ” she moaned. “ I’ll never
talk like that to you again. Never again ! ”

His eyelids flickered at last. He looked up into
her eyes stupidly. “ What were you saying,
Judy ? What were you saying ? ”

“ ril put you to bed ! ” she whispered. “ Come,
darling ! ”

She was awakened a couple of nights later by
the sound of feet in the next room marching
steadily, a few paces forward, a few paces back-
ward, then forward again. It was her father. She
debated with herself whether she ought to go to
his room and reason with him and urge him to
get to bed again. She wondered whether he would
resent her intrusion. Must he be left alone to
fight his daemon ? As she lay there, miserably
wondering what she had best do, the feet halted.
She heard him open his door and come along the
passage to her room. She had jumped out of bed
and opened the door before he knocked.

“ Oh, daddy, what is it ? Can I do anything ? ”

He held a folded handkerchief to his cheek.
“ I have a tooth,” he said. “ Do you happen to
have anything ? ”

“ Oh, you poor thing ! ” She rushed back into
her room and searched her things. “ Nothing,
nothing at all ! Oh yes, some aspirin ! Shall we

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174

wake the people up and find out if there’s any
chance of a dentist at this hour ? ”

“ No, I’ll wait till to-morrow. If I could only
get an hour or two’s sleep. . . .”

“ I know. We’ll wake Ali up. He sleeps on a
mattress in the passage. He knows where every-
thing is. He’ll get us some brandy.” She remem-
bered that she could usually get him off to sleep
with a glass of brandy and a couple of aspirins.
“ I’ll powder a couple of aspirins, too, and put
them in the tooth. Come to the light and show
me.

That is how it came about there was a whole
bottle of brandy in his bedroom, excepting for
the glassful he had taken to swallow his aspirins.

He went to the dentist next day and had the
tooth drawn. The next few days were unusually
tranquil. He went to bed that evening and read
for an hour, then switched his light out. But as
he slept, one after one the hounds of nightmare
were unleashed. He ran and ran with the hounds
in full cry after him. He turned his head and saw
their fangs grinning and their slavering chops.
He threw himself down before them so that they
should at length fall upon him and tear him to
pieces, so that he should be at peace at last. But
an invisible hand restored them to their leashes,
so that, though they strained towards him,
coughing and grunting hideously, they got no

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175

nearer to him. At length he rose wearily to his feet,
and began running again. Reran faster and faster,
but the beasts were slipped from their leashes
again. They ran as fast as he.

He woke up from the nightmare in a pool of
sweat. His pyjamas seemed to have been steeped
in icy water. He remembered the brandy on the
shelf above the washstand and filled his tooth-
glass with a hand that shook like a leaf. His hand
was a little steadier when he filled the glass a
second time. He went on drinking till he had
drained the whole bottle.

He had hardly taken more than a finger or
two of strong drink for many years now. He was
drunk. He had passed completely out of himself.
He looked round the room cautiously to see if he
was looking at himself. Then, to make sure, he
went over to the bed and thumped the bed-
clothes. No, he was not there. He was not under
the bed, either. Satisfied, he went back to the
brandy bottle. He had drained every drop of it,
so he looked round for some other occupation.
His eye lit on a blotting-pad on the small table
by the window. It was a blotting-pad, but it had
no blotting-paper. There was also a bottle of ink
there, and a pen, and one or two hotel sheets of
paper and envelopes. He was shivering a little, so
he went across to the hook where he had hung his
dressing-gown and put it on. Then he sat down

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176

at the table again and wrote a letter. It was very
brief.

Dear Sharples,

I haven’t any doubt you are in hell. My only
regret is that I didn’t send you sooner. I am
in hell, too, if that’s any comfort to you. But
you’ve not caught me yet.

Yours truly,

H. Wage.

He noticed there was no blotting-paper in the
pad, so he waved the letter before his face for a
minute or two, breathing on it now and again.
He then passed his finger over it lightly to see
that it was quite dry. Then he folded it and put
it neatly into one of the hotel envelopes. He
addressed it to :

Sidney Sharples
In Hell

and made sure the envelope, too, was quite dry.
He then addressed himself to the process of the
best way to get Sharpies’s letter forwarded, and
he decided the people in his office in Mincing
Lane would probably be in touch with him. He
forwarded it in their care.

Then he went over to his coat and took out his
wallet. No, he had no stamp. He had written no
letters lately. He had best hand it over to the

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177

youth, Ali, to post it the first thing to-morrow
morning. Ali was the hotel youth-of-all-work.
By day he did all the running and fetching for
the hotel, by night he slept on a mattress extended
along the stone passage in front of the entrance
door, Wace opened his door carefully and went
downstairs, Ali was leaning up on his mattress,
supported on the palms of his hands.

“ Yes, monsieur^’ he whispered. He had been
used more than once for delicate errands with
which clients of the hotel thought it best not to
entrust madame. But now he was required for no
such gallant service,

“ Post this letter first thing to-morrow morn-
ing,” said Wace. “ Keep the change from this
note.”

He had not only a bad cold but a worse head-
ache next morning. He saw Judy’s eye rest a
moment on the empty brandy bottle on the shelf
above the washstand. He hung his head like a
guilty schoolboy.

“ Yes, Judy,” he said, “ I’m afraid I did,
every drop of it. You’d best not leave any more
about.”

“ I won’t,” she said grimly. “ Trust me.”

She doctored him very capably and he was all
right again in a week or so.

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178

The nightmare came back to him. The pursuer
looked at him through the caK windows from
imder the brim of his hat. The pursuer came
running up in blue overalls from the docks, his
feet going softly dub-a-dub, dub-a-dub, on the
cobbles. Wace went into his daughter’s room early
one morning.

“ Judy,” he said. “ I know you like this place.”

“ Yes,” she replied, a ray of hope quickening
her heart. Yes, she liked this place. If they had to
be away another few months, or a year or two,
it might as well be Tunis as anywhere else. Was
he feeling safer here ? Did he think he had got
away at last ?

“ It’s the nicest place we’ve been to, isn’t it ? ”
he went on.

“ I think it is in many ways ”,

“ Would you like to stay „ ? ”

T..1 4. j on here .

What do you mean ^ „

“ Till I come back fo,j^’ ? Or I might send

for you ? ” ,

“ What are you talk. ? ..

Judy, Judy, I must ° „

“ Then you shall go, , »

“There are so mant people!” He looked

about him helplessly. “ people ! I’m

frightened ! Let’s go to i^ce ! I’ll be

quiet there I Just a fev i 1 »

“ Yes, daddy. When '"g^^ll we go ? ” She knew

THE PURSUER 179

that as soon as the sickness came upon him again,
it would brook no delay.

“ This morning ? ” he asked eagerly. “ Can
we go this morning ? ”

“ Yes, of course, daddy ! ” He did not hear her
faint sigh or mark the hopeless expression in her
eyes.

They went on to the small towns of Sousse and
Sfax, but the pursuer went after them. From
Sfax they took the single-track railway into the
heart of the country and attained the oasis of
Gafsa. From Gafsa they went still further afield to
the oasis of Tozeur. Here he walked with a firmer
foot. His shoulders straightened. But the railway
went so far as Tozeur. He felt he was still vulner-
able. They bumped out on an old Citroen over
fifteen miles of baked sand-tracks and so reached
the oasis of Nefta, which stands on the edge of
the enormous barren inland sea called the Chott
Djerid. “ I think I shall be all right here,” he
said. He looked as bronzed and fit as a soldier
of the legion. “ I’m sure you will, daddy,” she
said. “ This isn’t the other world at all. It’s a
world all to itself. It’s lovely ! ”

2

Yes, Nefta was a world all to itself, poised
between two dimensions of deep greenery and

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i8o

white hallucination. He would often sit for hours
in the shadow of the mosque with his back to the
palms and the pools and the lilies, tracing
fantastic designs in the hot sand, till at length the
fervid disk of the sun sank and the desert owls
came whooping out of the emptiness.

They arrived towards the latter days of the
fast and feast month of Ramadan. The minaret
that by day had been a white tulip, blossomed
into flame at dusk. The oil-lamps were lit round
the circuit of the parapet, so that it seemed as if
a handful of stars had tumbled down from the
sky head-over-heels and were caught in the iron
sconces of the parapet while they fell. All night
long they wandered about from booth to cafe,
from cafe to booth. They sipped the cinnamon-
scented tea, cross-legged on the straw-matted
platform of the cafes. They went to the booths of
the dancing dolls and the booths of more alluring
dancers — the Circassian Fatima, whose face was a
magnolia-bud and whose limbs were as volatile
as water, the Kabyle Ayesha, who danced like a
willow in a wind. Or they saw Mustapha enchant
his four deadly snakes out of their wicker basket,
numbing them with the wail of the desert bag-
pipes, stupefying them with the thud of the drums,
till they were poised erect like a sculptor’s snakes,
carved out of cold jade.

Then Rdmaddn came to its appointed end, and

THE PURSUER l8l

the suspension seemed to leave him blank and
timorous, as if only that unconscionable excite-
ment had held his doom at arm’s length. He had
been so interested, so genuinely happy all this
time, that the first relapse struck her like a blow
in the face. They were sitting at a eafe one eve-
ning under its plaited palm-leaf portico, when
suddenly he seized her by the arm.

“ That man there ! ” he said sharply. “ The
one coming down the market-place ! Who is he ?”

There were half a dozen Arabs approaehing,
their burnouses drawn over their foreheads. She
looked round the square to see if there was any
European who had caught his eye. There was
none. Elsewhere the Arabs sat about, squatting
on their haunches, talking gravely with one
another, or not talking at all. There was little
animation in the square. It had been intensely
hot all day. Everybody was happy enough to stay
in his place, savouring the soft wind that had
sprung up not many minutes ago.

“ Who do you mean, daddy ? I don’t see
anybody ! ”

“ What’s he hiding his face like that for ? ”

“ Which one ? He’s not hiding his face. He’s
just got his burnous down like the others ! Which
one ? ”

“ The one hanging behind there ! Do you see ?
He’s looking at us. Now he’s looking away ! ”

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182

“ I don’t know who he is ! Just one of the
Arabs of the oasis ! Oh, daddy, please ! ”

“ I don’t like him, Judy ! ”

“ Hello, look ! He’s coming here ! He’s prob-
ably got something to sell ! Yes ? Yes ? ” she
asked the Arab eagerly.

The fellow was standing beside them. He had
noticed there were a couple of strangers at the
cafe. He dived into a worn leather satchel
suspended over his arm and brought out an
assortment of rough desert brooches and brace-
lets. “ Tris bon!'' he insisted. Bon marchS ! "
“ There you are, daddy, you silly creature ! ”
she chuckled. “ Buy something, daddy ! Buy that
brooch ! I could use it as a hat-pin.”

“ Sorry, Judy,” he muttered, shamefacedly.
“ Silly of me. It won’t happen again ! ”

It did not happen again for several days. And
then she knew the respite was over. Her heart
flooded with wretchedness. He was afraid to go
through the narrow streets of the oasis at night
on their way from the little square to their hotel,
for his fear would suddenly fix on some hapless
Arab approaching them with his burnous drawn
down over his forehead. He would turn suddenly
in his tracks. “ Come this way ! ” he would
beseech her piteously. “ That fellow there ! He’s

j THE PURSUER I83

no' ban Arab at all ! He doesn’t walk like an
Arab ! ”

They arranged one morning to go out with one
Abdul, a young guide from the oasis, to take a
walk along the edge of the Chott. A faint breeze
was blowing and she felt that his spirit might
expand in the spaciousness of that white desola-
tion. When they had gone on thus for some time,
Abdul suggested that they should turn in upon
a strait which led across the Chott here, where it
was narrowest. Nowhere in that region were the
mirages so clear, with the shimmering salt-wastes
on every side and the alchemic sun overhead
dissolving in its own heat and light. Abdul bade
them keep closely behind him in single file, for it
was only to his trained eye that the path pre-
sented a different surface from the salt scurf o
the Chott on either side of it. Her father walked
between herself and Abdul. She did not know
how long or how far they had gone on thus, for
time and space seemed outside their normal
dimensions. She heard bells ringing and camels
snarling far off in the shaggy rondure of the
oasis, but it seemed those sounds were checked
and refracted from the convex surface of a globe
that isolated them. Tiny worms and large snakes
of heat undulated and curved round upon them-
selves and so consumed themselves. The level salt
at the edge of the horizon suddenly cracked like

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184

ice in a thaw, and blue water flowed up v,
the fissures. A lake of incredible blueness sprea..
on that region and a dark shore asserted itself
where there had been no shore for countless salty
leagues. One date-palm larger than all the
rest spread out its fretted vans over the sweet
water.

Then suddenly a movement near at hand threw
a quick grey shadow over the blue myth half a
continent away and extinguished it. Her eyes
were aware that the solid line that, with herself
for one of its termini, for few or many minutes,
few or many hours, had been moving along the
solid strait, the assurance of truth and safety
in that false and perilous world, had been
broken.

“ Daddy ! ” she shrieked. “ Daddy ! Where
are you going ? It’s not safe ! ”

But Abdul had sped after him. With both his
lean brown hands on his collar, he pulled him
away from the quaking salty quick-sand that was
already rising round his ankles.

“ Pas bon ! ” he said severely. “ Trks mauvais ! ”

Wace’s face was as pock-marked and ashen
grey as the Chott itself. He was panting like an
animal at bay. “ He was after me ! ” he whis-
pered, his eyes large with fright. The sweat ran
down his face in a steady sheet.

“ Come carefully, daddy ! ” she said. “ We’ll

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185

go back. There’s room enough. Don’t be fright-
ened. I don’t think we did right to choose this
place.”

“ It was like a lot of horses galloping ! ” he
breathed.

“ Yes, daddy,” she said. “ But there aren’t
any, are there ? Take your time. That’s right.
That’s fine.”

3

He had a fierce repugnance against going back
the way he had come. It was as if he felt that his
only chance of escape lay in moving on and on
until he had attained some place where the pur-
suer was at length outwitted. If he went back on
his tracks again, he would come up against him,
in some small waiting-room. Their trains would
come alongside each other in a siding. He would
be waiting for him at a ticket-barrier.

He was aware it was possible to go from Nefta
deeper into the heart of the desert, on to El Oued
and Touggourt. He tried hard to make Judy go
that way, but she stood firm. She knew he was
quite unfit to stand the hard travelling by desert
car. She knew also that the same difficulty would
present itself a day or two later. They would go
to Biskra and from Biskra they would have to
come out on to their former track again. There

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1 86

was nothing for it but to go back to Tunis by
Sfax and Sousse.

He was very dispirited when they got to Tunis.
“ I don’t like coming back ! ” he repeated. “ I
don’t like it ! We’ll take a boat somewhere at
once ! To-day ! ”

“ Yes, daddy,” she agreed. “ It’ll do you good
to get out to sea. The sea-wind will clear your
head. It’ll be fine.”

He grimaced. “It was a mistake to go to the
desert. It was dreadful.”

“ Wouldn’t you like to rest up a day or two
in the hotel where we were before ? I think you
ought. Besides, we may have to. It depends on
the boats.”

“ No,” he said. “ Not there. We mustn’t go
back there. Let’s put the bags away and go and
find out.”

“ Where would you like to go ? Tangier ? We
could probably get a boat to Tangier.”

“ Hush ! ” he bade her. He looked round
suspiciously. “ Don’t talk so loud.” He raised his
voice. “ Yes, we might go to Tangier.” Then he
dropped his voice again. He spoke to her without
turning his head. “ We’ll go the other way
instead, see ? You know where I mean ? ”

They took tickets that morning for Alexandria.
There was a boat sailing that same afternoon.
It meant, too, that they did not need to go to a

THE PURSUER 187

hotel in Tunis. He was distrustful of Tunis. He
sniffed the air suspiciously.

“ I don’t like it,” he said, more than once. “ I
wish we hadn’t had to come back here.”

“ But daddy, there wasn’t anything else for it.”

“ I don’t know. I suppose not. I don’t like it.”

He refused to go into the town, so, after taking
their tickets they drove out to the Belvedere Park.
They spent an hour or two there and had an
early lunch, then, though it was still several
hours too soon for the boat, he insisted they
should go down to the dockside. It was as if he
wanted to keep the boat under his eye, to make
sure it would not go off without him. He was
irritated to find that a big warehouse fronted the
part of the quay where the boat was berthed.
Unless they loitered about on their feet for some
hours, in the dust and swelter, they would have
to move further off. They sat down under the
tattered awning of a cheap cafe, their bags under
the table between their feet. A short distance
along the waterside, between the boat from
Alexandria and the cafe, a small passenger-
steamer was getting under way. The passengers
were already arriving, luggage was being trundled
up the gangways. Its siren hooted once and
again. There was, however, still little sign of life
on the boat for Alexandria.

“ I wish they’d get a move on,” grumbled

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1 88

Wace. “ They’ve not even got the gangway
down.”

“ We’re not due to leave for some hours,” his
daughter said patiently.

Then suddenly a hearty voice hailed them.

“ Hello, monsieur. Hello, mademoiselle. How are
you ? ” It spoke in bastard Arab-French.

“ Who the devil’s that ? ” Wace whispered
fearfully. A large dark face was grinning friendlily
into theirs.

“ Oh, hello. All ! ” said Judy. “ It’s the Arab
boy from the hotel,” she explained. “ Don’t you
remember ? ”

“ Oh, yes,” said Wace hurriedly. “ Give him
a few francs. Tell him to go.”

“ Here. Buy yourself some cigarettes ! ”
requested Judy.

Ali grinned gratefully, displaying teeth as white
as soap-suds. “ Thank you. Thank you.” He was
about to proceed on his errand, when suddenly
he recalled something. “ Oh, yes,” he said. “ I
hope the monsieur, he find you.”

“ What ? ” said Wace. “ What’s he saying ? ”
His eyes were starting from his head. The fingers
round his coffee-cup trembled so that it clicked
in the saucer like a castanet.

“ What are you talking about ? ” said Judy
sharply. “You mean some guide, do you, who
wanted to take us round ? ”

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189

“ Oh, no,” said Ali, quite crestfallen, “ He was
not guide. He asked for the monsieur. He was sad
the monsieur had gone,”

Wace’s breath came heavily through his nos-
trils. “ Ask him,” he bade her, “ What sort
of a gentleman he was ? What did he say to
him ? ”

“ What I say to him ? I say the monsieur and
mademoiselle have gone to Sousse. See, I remem-
ber.” He looked up pathetically for approval. “ I
hold the bags, while mademoiselle buys tickets.”

“ You’d best go now, Ali, do you hear ? ” She
felt she must get rid of him that very moment,
at all costs. What was the lout standing about
for, with his great goggle eyes and his thick
lips ?

“ No.” Her father’s voice came faintly. “ Ask
what was he like. We must know.”

“ What was he like ? ” she asked furiously.

The youth’s wits were quite scattered now.
His head was shaking from side to side ludicrously.
“ He was like ? How shall I say ? He was a
monsieur.”

“ Was he English ? French ? ”

“ I not know. He talk French, I think. Yes, he
talk French.”

“ Was he big ? ”

“ Not big.”

“ Was he small ? ”

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190

“ Not small.”

“ Father, we can get nothing out of him. Let’s
get rid of him.”

“ No, Judy, no.” He himself addressed the
Arab. “ What more can you remember ? See.
Here’s money. What can you remember.”

The lad gazed covetously at the money. It
seemed to set the mechanism of his mind work-
ing. He described a cut in the cheek, he suggested
a limp, alternately he said the man had a beard,
and that his cheeks and chin were pale like
mademoiselle's.

“ Father,” she begged. “ He’s just lying for the
money. I’ll send him away.”

He sank back into his chair, with his eyes
closed. There was not a vestige of colour in his
face. “ I’m glad we’re going to Alexandria,” he
said, very articulately. “ That doctor in Alex-
andria should do me lots of good.”

“ Yes,” she whispered. She wondered if the
lad’s news had sent him quite crazy.

“ Send him away,” he went on. “ Give him a
decent tip.”

She got rid of him. The boy went off bowing
and smirking, but there was an air of bewilder-
ment in his face. Judging from the tip, he had not
done wrong, after all. Yet they had seemed very
angry, very strange, he did not know why. He
Went off, scratching his thick pate.

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I9I

“ Daddy, what did you say that for ? I don’t
understand. Listen, daddy. It’s nothing at all.
It needn’t be anyone at all ”

“ Which way has he gone ? ” he asked. He
did not open his eyes.

“ Towards the town. Quite likely it was some
tradesman or other that the people at the
hotel ”

“ Is he still in sight ? ”

“ Yes. No. He’s just turned the corner. I’ll get
you a drop of brandy. It’ll pull you together.”

“ No. I don’t want anything at all.” He spoke
in measured tones like someone rehearsing a
part. She looked at him in astonishment and
alarm. She had been more than half afraid he
would give way to a wild fit of panic the moment
the blundering fool of an Arab boy left them, but
this grey immobility was more frightening. He
thought for a little while, then he said : “ How
long do you reckon it will be before that small
steamer moves off? ”

“ Which one ? The one along the waterside ? ”

“ Yes.”

“ Why ? ”

Impatiently, he answered his own question.
“ Less than a hour, I should think. I should say
half an hour. What do you think ? ”

“ I’ll go and ask, if you like. Or the man at the
cafe here is sure to know.”

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192

“You must do nothing of the sort. The mail-
bag is still hooked up on the gangway ? ”

“ Yes.”

“ There’s still a certain amount of stuflF to go
into the hold ? ”

“Yes.” She had not the faintest idea what he
was getting at.

“ Pay this bill.” She paid it. He opened his
eyes. He looked calm and collected, as if he were
in his office in London, settling the details of
some deal. “ We’ll take our bags and go along the
quayside to the right. There are some taxis there
behind the warehouses. We’ll get a taxi and cruise
about. Ten minutes later we’ll ask the driver to
drive us straight to that boat.”

“ What for ? We don’t know where it’s going.”

“ Exactly,” he said.

“ But our tickets, daddy. We’ve got our
tickets for ”

“ Be quiet, Judy ! Are you ready ? ”

Then she looked at him. At last she understood.
“ Sorry ! ” she muttered. “ What a fool I am ! ”

Twenty minutes later, a taxi deposited them
on the quayside opposite the boat. They rushed
up the gangway, breathlessly, only a few minutes
before it was detached and trundled away.

“ That was a close shave !” they congratulated
each other. The steward taking the tickets
smiled sympathetically.

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193

“ Tickets, monsieur ! ”

“ No time to get tickets ! ” Wace gasped.
“ Thought we’d best do it on board ! ”

“ Motto piacere ! ”

The boat was making for Messina in Sicily,
by way of Trapani and Palermo. They booked
for Messina.

4

She could not remember when she had seen
him in such good form. Every now and again he
chuckled to himself like a small boy who has got
the better of a schoolmaster. As they steamed
down the canal towards the harbour opening,
and the minarets and towers of Tunis dwindled
behind them, he stationed himself in the stern and
gazed triumphantly at the city he had outwitted.
She thought once he stuck his tongue out at it.
But she herself was not happy. She had no idea
where they stood now. She had little enough idea
before, but she had worked out some sort of
system in the light of which she resisted or
yielded to his fears. She had tried to extract from
him the exact nature of those fears and had not
succeeded. But as far as her own knowledge or
experience was concerned, she had treated them
as purely psychological, they had no relation
with tangible fact.

A fresh elemeiit had now entered the situation.

Np

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194

Who was this mysterious caller who had inquired
after them in the Tunis hotel ? Had he inquired
after her father, or after both of them ? Was it not
even possible that he had inquired only after
her, some preposterous gallant who had eyed
her with favour, found out where she lived and
imagined he had only to present himself to get
what he wanted out of her ? The thought sickened
her, but she would have infinitely preferred that
facile solution of the mystery, and she knew in
her bones that she would cheat herself if she would
permit herself to accept it even for a moment.

The caller had inquired after her father. She
reproached herself bitterly for not having made a
more intelligent effort to extract from the boy,
Ali, some coherent picture of the stranger.
She should have handled him differently, she
should have wheedled him back into peace of
mind again, or bullied him until he was too
frightened to think of telling anything but the
truth. But it had been impossible at that moment
to think of anything at all excepting the effect
that the boy’s news might produce on her father.
For the first time since they had left London, he
was made aware that something more substantial
than a ghost had come up out of the darkness
and interested itself in him. If mere ghosts had
so hounded him, how would he react to grim flesh
and blood ? She had been ready for anything.

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195

She had been ready for him to dither and
foam in panic, to fall back in a dead faint, from
which someone not wholly the same as he might
emerge.

But no, he had not reacted so at all. The colour
had left his face, but his hand had not trembled,
his mind had worked clearer than it had worked
for months. And once he had carried through his
plan, once they were embarked on this unantici-
pated journey, he was, if only briefly, a bright-
eyed young man again. The steamer was swinging
out now into the open gulf, midway between the
two breakwaters that protect the harbour. He
threw back his head and laughed loudly. It was
a grand joke.

Then suddenly she realised that it was precisely
because the thing that had now manifested itself
in the course of this insensate pursuit was some-
thing more substantial than a ghost that the
monstrous burden of his heart had been lightened.
He had not himself been able to distinguish
whether any carnal creature flung the shadow
that fell so menacingly before him on stone pave-
ment and salty sand. Now he had the testimony
of another human being that it was flesh and
blood that followed him, testimony all the more
valuable because a wretched half-breed lad pro-
vided it, who slept of nights like a dog on a straw
palliasse. It was human, it had no more than one

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196

brain at a time and two pairs of limbs. It was
something you could outwit, you could cut and
run and dart off at right angles, leaving it
bewildered in the rear, to go puffing and lumber-
ing off to Alexandria, say.

He would regret it later, but there was no time
to regret it now, the fact that he did not know
whether the creature was fat or slim, old or young,
fair or dark. It was enough for him to know it
was merely human.

But was he fair or dark ? Was he fat or slim ?
She found herself looking round among the
passengers on deck, the commercial travellers,
the small farmers or shopkeepers, to see if any
of them might be he. As her neck twitched
towards her shoulder, as her eyes swivelled
sideways and took in all they could see and
then swivelled back again, she was conscious of
an imitation of her father’s gestures so exact as
to be in the nature of parody. She smiled wryly.
It was not that she feared for her own sake the
incubus of his nightmare. She knew, whether
it was a matter of days or a matter of hours,
her father would soon enough need once more
all she could supply of quiet nerves and a clear
head.

About a couple of hours after Tunis had gone
dpwn into the sea behind them, a mountain

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197

came into sight, condensing into shape between
the blue vacuums of sea and sky. It was the
island of Pantellaria. Like the suspended cup of
a streaked tiger-lily the volcano floated on the
waters.

“ Hello ! ” said Wace. “ We seem to be making
for this island here. Do wc stay long ? ”

“ We anchor out here for a couple of hours,”
said the steward who had greeted the panting
Englishman and the young lady at the top of
the gangway. He had taken a great fancy to
them. He thought their feat very English and
comical. “You could not rush out to the boat
from Pantellaria at the last moment as you did
in Tunis, signore ! ” He thrust his elbow lightly
into Wace’s ribs.

“ No,” said Wace, “ no ! ” His eyes were
shining. He turned suddenly to the steward.
“If I were in Pantellaria — is that how you
pronounce it ? — I shouldn’t want to ! ” His
daughter looked at him with surprise and
pleasure. There was a flush on his cheeks. His
shoulders were thrust back to let the sweet sharp
air flow into his lungs. “ What an idiot I was
to let him go to the desert,” she told herself.
“ The sea’s the place for him ! He’ll be himself
in a few weeks with this air and sunshine. We
must find some small place by the sea, somewhere
in Sicily ! ”

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198

“ Hello ! ” cried Wace. “ There seem to be
fires all over the island ! That’s strange ! There
isn’t anything to burn, is there, up on the hill-
side ? ”

The steward was delighted to take him in
hand. “ Those arefumaroli, as they call themselves.
The whole place is a volcano, not quite dead
yet. The fumaroli are whiffs of sulphur from
below.” He pointed downward facetiously, and
imitated the devil’s horns with two fingers on
his forehead.

“ Straight from Hell, eh ? ” laughed Wace.
He found the idea irresistibly funny. He laughed
again, quite uproariously. The steward joined
in the laughter, till the two gentlemen stood
and swayed on the deck, the tears pouring
down their cheeks. The passengers near by
looked on curiously. One or two smiled. One
or two moved away.

“ If I lean down over the hole,” asked Wace,
“ could I look directly down into Hell, do you
think ? ”

“ Ho ! Ho ! Ho ! ” laughed the steward.
“ You could see all the little devils ! ”

“ And the big devils ? I’d like to see the big
devils, too ! ”

“ And the big devils, of course ! ”

“ If you’d hold one of my hands,” said Wace,
“I’d reach down with the other till I could

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199

pull their tails. Would you give me a hand ? ”
“ If you wouldn’t pull me in ! ” gasped the
steward, patting his belly under the distended
blue trousers.

“ No, I wouldn’t pull you in ! ” laughed
Wace easily. Then his face darkened. “ What
do you mean ? ” His tone was cold and severe.
The steward goggled, puzzled. But the gaiety
came back into the Englishman’s face again
almost as quickly as it had been eclipsed. “ I
should like to live in Pantellaria,” he said.
“ It must be a gay place ! ”

“ Ah, gay, that is another matter ! ” the
steward was forced to qualify. “ A diet of fish
and raisins is not gay ! ”

They were letting the anchor-chain slip
through the hawse-pipe into the water. A tiny
armada of rowing-boats hove up along the
narrow channel that led out from the harbour
into the open roadstead. Wace turned to Judy.
An idea had struck him.

“ What would you say, Judy ? ” He spoke in
a half-whisper. “ How about going back in
one of those boats ? We didn’t even know our-
selves the steamer was going to stop here.
Wouldn’t it be a brilliant idea ? ” He looked at
her a little doubtfully ; once more there was
something of the schoolboy in his demeanour,
the schoolboy who makes a suggestion too

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THE PURSUER

clever by half to his teacher, and is rather afraid
he will be snubbed for his pains.

She felt he had had his head too much that
day. Sooner or later he would pay for these in-
discretions, these colt-like buckings and boltings.

•“ Listen, daddy ! ” she said urgently. “ It
won’t do ! It won’t do at all ! It was all right
once. Jumping on board, I mean, without
tickets. That can happen to anyone. But we’ve
booked to Messina, remember. We can’t jump
a second time. We just ean’t do it ! ”

He looked at her scornfully. “ What are you
afraid of, Judy ? ” he sneered. “ What are you
so nervy about ? All right ! I’ll give in to you !
I’m enjoying the voyage anyhow ! ” Then he
bent towards her ear. “ We’ve got clear, I tell
you ! Do you understand ? We’ve got clear ! ”
He walked away from her and joined his friend,
the steward, who was getting busy with the ship’s
ladder. The rowing-boats had come within
hailing distance. Wace made a megaphone out
of his hands. “ Hi ! ” he bawled. “ Come sta ? ”
“ Bene ! E lei ? ” the first boatman replied to
the jovial foreign gentleman.

They did not disembark either at Trapani
or Palermo, though her father had assured
Judy cordially there was no reason at all why
she should not get off and stretch her legs for
a few hours. The thought of Sicily had always

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201

attracted her, but somehow she felt she could
not leave him on the boat behind her, and he
flatly refused to go ashore. He was more vul-
nerable, she felt, in this mood of queer fixed
gaiety than in the dark moods when every nerve
was alert for the pursuing shadow.

“ It would be different,” he said, “ if Sicily
was really an island. But it isn’t. It’s too big.
It’s a country. I don’t want to go into a town
either. I’m happy here, in this boat. I wish we
could stay on for weeks and weeks.” He looked
round the boat affectionately, as if he had
designed it, or had something to do with the
sailing of it. For herself, she found her cabin
stuffy and the food dull. She did not like the
way her father’s friend, the steward, ogled her,
and she got no pleasure in the contemplation
of any of the passengers. She would be glad when
they got to Messina.

Both at Trapani and Palermo, when the new
passengers started embarking, she found herself
hanging about the head of the gangway, scruti-
nising them as they came aboard. “ But this is
stupid ! ” she reproved herself. “ This is com-
pletely ridiculous ! What interest can these
people be to me ? It isn’t as if there can be the
faintest connection between our friend in Tunis
and any of these people ! I wonder what’s
happening to me ! I’m going silly ! ” She looked

202

THE PURSUER

at her father. He had emerged out of his shell
completely. He was in the middle of a group of
passengers who had embarked at Tunis, chatter-
ing away amiably. He puffed every now and
again at a cigar.

“Judy,” he called out to her. “ Come and
meet Cavaliere Respighi. Isn’t it funny ! We
used to import pumice from his brother, in the
old days in Doomington ! Pumice from the
Lipari Islands ! We’re going to pass quite close
to them, just short of Messina. This is my
daughter, cavaliere ! ”

Her heart sank. She was appalled. Hitherto
he had not even uttered her name aloud. He
had given no hint who the young woman with
him might be, daughter or young wife or nurse.
Now he summoned her by name as his daughter.
He spoke of his old associations with Doomington.
He was littering his trail as thick with clues as
the hares on a schoolboy hare-and-hounds chase.
She came over to the cavaliere, stood about
awkwardly for a minute or two, and then,
before she was quite aware of it, she was standing
once more at the head of the gangway, looking
suspiciously out of the corner of her eye into
the faces of the new passengers. “ Though God
knows,” she said to herself bitterly, “ what I
expect to see, or how I shall recognise it when
I see it.”

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203

From far off across the limpid night the high-
lifted torch of Stromboli announced the Lipari
Islands, where the ancients fabled that iEolus
ruled his winds. That night he had them well at
heel, except for one small zephyr that had begged
if it might go wandering over the violet silk
waters. It was a zephyr so small and cool that the
silk fabric was not more ruffled than if a swallow
or two had stroked it. The stars blinked as if
Stromboli’s torch had come up too close to the
night’s forehead. The engines rumbled sleepily.

Judy was standing in the stern looking down
at the filigree of ivory lace that momently was
ravelled and unravelled in the boat’s wake. She
felt a finger on her shoulder and heard a whisper
in her ear. “ Come this way, Judy. I have some-
thing to tell you.”

“ Certainly, daddy.” She wondered why, if
he had something to tell her, he did not tell her
there and then. She wondered why he needed to
bend and whisper so melodramatically in her ear.
She walked after him. He walked with exagger-
ated softness. He turned and put his finger to his
lips and said “ Hush ! ” Then he halted against
the boat-rail at a spot not at all more secluded
than the one where she had been standing.

“ Are you sure there’s no one about ? ” he asked,
and looked round.

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204

“ I don’t think so. What’s all this about,
daddy ? ”

“ Turn round,” he said to her. She turned
round. “ Don’t look at me as if I’m talking.”

“ All right,” she said, puzzled. Then she heard
him chuckle. She realised suddenly he was
making fun of her. He was parodying the caution
which had made an agony of their lives for so
long for both of them. She bit her lip to prevent
herself breaking into tears.

He was not in the least aware how his humour
was affecting her. He continued with his joke.
He spoke to her without turning his head, and
with an exaggerated muting of the consonants.
“ When we get to the end of our journey . . .
won’t say where . . . wild horses wouldn’t drag
the name of the place out of me ... we take the
first train back along this coast. . . . Hello, did you
hear a footstep ? ”

“ No, daddy, no.”

“ You get to another little port . . . find out
name when we get there . . . from there we go to
certain group of . . . they’re all surrounded by
water, anyhow, every one of them, see . . . we’re
going to have fine old time . . . how’re you feeling,
Judy, are you all right ? ”

“ Father,” she said to him quietly. “ Are you
drunk ? ”

He whipped round and blazed at her. “ What

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205

the hell do you mean, am I drunk ? You know I
never touch a drop ! Oh, you make me sick ! ”

He turned on his heel and strode away furiously.

5

It was very early in the morning when they
reached Messina, but the idea of resting up for a
few hours did not seem to occur to him. They
drove straight from the port to the station, where
he deposited her with the bags in the waiting-
room. He was still a little peevish with her,
for the exaltation of the previous day and night
was already wearing off. He went off to get
tickets, and found that the ticket-office would
not be open till a few minutes before the train left.
They had some breakfast and kicked their heels
in the waiting-room for a couple of hours. Then
at last he asked her to follow him. It was not until
they got into the train that he let her know the
name of the station they were making for, and
even then, with the same cynical exaggeration of
caution as he had adopted the night before, he
did not actually utter the name of the place.
“ Here ! ” he said. “ This is wi^ere we’re going
to.” She read the name Milazzo on the tickets.

Something had happened to upset his temper
considerably. “ It’s a nuisance,” he grumbled.
“ We arrive twenty minutes too late.”

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206

“ What for ? ” she asked. She was not aware
that they were overburdened with engagements.

“ You’ll sec,” .he said.

Then he saw how her face fell. His conscience
pricked him for being so ungracious. “ I’m sorry,
Judy, I’m sorry.” He leaned forward and patted
her hand on her knee. “ Forgive me for being a
crusty old gentleman.”

Immediately she warmed again towards him,
as a chilled landscape will smile with all its woods
and waters when the sun shines out briefly
between masses of cold cloud. “ That’s all right,
daddy. I’ve been rather silly myself.”

“ No,” he said sombrely. “ Not half so silly as
me.

“ No, no,” she urged him. “ It’s exactly what
we both need. To get away. To forget.”

“ Oh, Tudy, Judy.” His voice was very sad.
“ If I only could.”

“ You shall, daddy, you shall. First for hours
at a time. Then it’ll be days at a time. The days
will be weeks and months before you know where
you are.”

“ I wonder.” I^c looked up at her and smiled
wanly into her face.

“ You see, daddy. I’ve been thinking.” She
stopped and looked into his eyes. “ Shall I go
on I

There was no one but themselves in their

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207

carriage. He looked round again to make sure
that somehow someone else had not ensconced
himself there,

“ What did you want to say ? ” he quivered
timidly.

“ Daddy, daddy,” she begged him. She seized
his wrists and pressed them firmly. “ I love you.
Remember that. Please don’t be so frightened,”

He realised she censured him for the timidity
of his voice. “ What did you want to say ? ” he
asked again. His voice was firmer this time.

“Just one thing. Then I won’t say any more.
You see ”

“ Yes ? ”

“ I can only get things said now and again,
when a moment comes. Then the moment goes.
I mustn’t say any more. You won’t let me.”

“ There’s nothing you can say.”

“ Oh, yes. There’s one thing. Nothing was your
fault. Nothing, nothing, nothing. If I didn’t
honestly believe that, I couldn’t have kept going.
And I don’t think you could, either.”

“ The wounded animal keeps going till it finds
a hole somewhere and creeps into it and dies.”

“ But you’re not going to die ! ” she cried
fiercely, shaking him by the shoulders. “ You’re
not going to die ! We’re going to have a grand
time ! ”

“ Yes,” he sighed. “ I think we might be quite

2o8

THE PURSUER

happy in those islands. It is a damn nuisance ! ”
he broke out, for the mention of the islands
already put his grievance back into his mind.

“ What ? ”

“ We arrive about twenty minutes too late for
the morning boat ! ”

“ That’s all right, daddy. We’ll take the boat
to-morrow. Here we are, all on our own in the
wide wide world.” She stopped. “ Nobody knows
you’re going to the islands ? ”

“ No,” he replied bitterly. “ I wasn’t quite
such a fool as that. I let slip we were going across
to Reggio and Brindisi.”

“ Well then,” she smiled. “ Let’s have a lovely
day to-day. Let’s get some eggs and bread and
sardines and walk and bathe. Shall we ? ”

“ I’d like to have been in time for the boat,”
he said unhappily.

They booked rooms for the night at a little inn
at Milazzo and got the people to put up some food
for them in a bag. They learned that the coast
here at Milazzo prolonged itself in a promontory
that nosed three miles northward towards the
Lipari Islands.

“ That’s fine,” said Wace. “ Let’s go that way.
We can bathe if we feel like it. Anyhow we can
look at the islands.”

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209

They thrust their way through a tangle of
myrtle and arbutus down the hill-slope to the sea,
a minute or two’s walk from the lighthouse at the
top of the promontory. “ Go and have a bathe,
Judy,” he bade her. “ I’m quite happy.”

And, indeed, as he sat there leaning against a
rock gilded with lichen, his elbows on his knees
and his chin cupped in his hands, he looked like a
pilgrim who sees the sanctuary he has been
making for only a day’s distance away, and smiles
a little, and sighs. For now he embraces the whole
of it as a single spiritual entity. To-morrow he
will arrive. He will be able to put out his hands
and feel the walls. He will need to think of it in
terms of food and drink. It will create its complex
of minor problems. But now — it is exempt from
problems now.

“ I’m going in, daddy,” she called out from
behind a rock. “ You’d best come in too, won’t
you ? ”

He did not reply. He had fallen asleep, his
forehead resting on his knees.

The mood of gaiety returned to him the
moment he set foot on the tiny steamer next
morning which was to take them out to the island
of Lipari.

“ I think," he exclaimed, " I shouldn’t ever
Op

210 THE PURSUER

have been a business-man. I should have been
a sailor.”

“ Why not ? ” she said. “ If we’re not spent
up, we’ll buy a boat. You’ll be the captain
and I’ll be the crew.”

“ We’ll do hornpipes ! ” he promised her.
“ Look ! Do you see Stromboli there ? I like
Stromboli ! The hole at the top there is bigger
than any of those wretched little scratches in
Pantellaria ! ” An odd expression came into his
eyes, a certain malignancy screwed up the
corners of his mouth. “ You’re bound to get a
much better view of Hell from the top of Strom-
boli ! ” he announced.

She shivered. It was as if a tiny gust of cold
wind came up from the north and flicked her
face. Then the gust went out like a candle-
flame. He seized her by the arm. “ Look at the
colour of this water ! ” he bade her. “ If you
put your hand in it, it would come out Prussian
blue ! ”

“ What lovely people ! ” he exclaimed bene-
volently, as they drew up against the landing-
stage. “ All of them ! All of them ! ” He opened
his arms, as if he would embrace them, the
freckled fisher-boys, the almond-eyed broad-
browed girls, the housewives with their aprons,
the waterside officials, here at the end of the
world, who were to give him peace at last in

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2II

the warm shadow of their churches and the
coolness of their rock-hung waters.

“ I wonder,” his daughter mused, “ how long
he’ll find them lovely. It’s a strange place and
a far place. But I wonder if it’s far enough.”

They found rooms in the house of a stout
vague lady named Donna Francesca, of whom
it was vaguely thought by herself and her
daughters that her father had been a prince
from Mantua. The daughters and the mother
moved about the rooms of their house with a
dim swishing of their skirts and a sleepy whisper
of curtains pulled open and pulled to again.
There was a dove-cote in the courtyard behind
the house whence a sleepy murmur came, hardly
more drowsy than the voices of the ladies so
augustly descended. The front windows looked
out upon the garth of the cathedral which was
so crowded with golden flowers that, seen
obliquely, it looked like a sheet of beaten metal ;
until, looking more closely, you saw the million
flower-heads incline to the probing of the bees.
The million-fold buzzing became a quality of
the very air, till a torpor numbed the brain as
insidiously as a distilled opiate.

This, at least, was the effect of Lipari on
Harry Wace. To Judy the place was sometimes

212 THE PURSUER

almost painfully exciting. She saw and almost
heard the great lateral puffs of smoke hissing out
of the horizontal rifts of Vulcano over the water,
under which the naked deposits of sulphur
glared balefully. Closer at hand, on Lipari
itself, sulphur flowered riotously in a broom
more furious than any she had set eyes on.
The monstrous-leaved fig-trees gesticulated
fiercely against the smoking summits of the
volcanoes.

Her nerves became unsteadier from day to day,
while the torpor of the doves and bees seemed
to possess him more and more completely.
His movements were circumscribed within an
area of half a mile or less — with the harbour
and the cathedral hill at its frontiers. He had
promised Judy more than once they would go
out on an excursion to one of the other islands,
Filicuri or Alicuri or above all, Stromboli, which
had so vividly provoked his imagination when
he first steamed into these waters. But somehow
the desire went from him. He let the days slip
by like pebbles released one by one softly into
a blue pool. There were times when Judy felt
like banging her head against a rock with the
gnawing tedium of it. She had to stuff her hand-
kerchief into her mouth to prevent herself crying
aloud. She was tired of the ineffable blue of sea
and sky. She yearned for the soapy scud of the

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213

tide flooding the grey reaches of the Thames
estuary. She ached to go out bare-headed into
Doomington rain, sour with the impurities it
combed out of the charged atmosphere. At these
times, she set herself to a determined effort
of the imagination. She recalled the hunted,
haunted creature her father had been, fleeing
with staring eyes from his pursuer, down in-
terminable streets and vast savannahs of desert.
She looked at him now, where he lay motionless
as a lizard on the warm rock. Or they might be
out with Rosario in his rowing-boat. He would
get tired of dabbling his hand in the water,
and would dislodge Rosario from the thwart,
and take the oars in hand. He would screw his
head round towards her, with a grin of pride
in his accomplishment, for he had never been
any sort of an oarsman before. So, as she contem-
plated and compared these aspects of him, her
nostalgia would be attenuated. She sighed deeply,
and if he heard it, he imagined it was a sigh of
well-being. “ Happy, Judy ? ” he asked her.
“ Tremendously,” she replied, smiling. “ That’s
fine, Judy. That’s fine. We were right, weren’t
we ? It’s a grand place, eh, the only place in
the world.”

The thought of the future now and again
knocked on the door of her mind. But there was
nothing to do at all but to refuse it admission.

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214

The weeks, the months, would achieve them-
selves, the years, perhaps. The formulation of
the word filled her with desolation. She had
vowed herself to him, to fulfil the debt another
had contracted. If it was to be years, well and
good — let it be years.

But it would not be. How long would it take
before the inquirer in Tunis nosed out the trail
again ? Had he drawn blank in Alexandria ?
Had he drawn blank in Reggio ? How long would
it be before he sniffed the trail again in Milazzo ?

How long ? She was a raving fool ! The fellow
had merely come to sell them something. The
people at the hotel provided the carpet touts,
the coffee-set touts, the rug and perfume touts,
with the names of the foreigners staying with
them. They got a rake-off out of the proceeds.
Why, her father himself had forgotten the
episode completely. But completely. He never
talked of it. The shadow of it never came into
his eyes.

The weeks went by and the nostalgia recurred
less frequently. The hot sun, the aromatic
odours, the perpetual dazzle of the sea, were
coursing along her veins like some injected
anodyne. If there had once been a Judy Wace,
there was less and less of Judy Wace now, as
the days, pearly with white heat, heaped them-
selves above her prostrate body like the fall of

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215

petals from an orchard where the blossom was
renewed as soon and as silently as it had expended
itself.

She, too, at first, had gone down with him
every morning at ten o’clock to see the steamer
come in from Milazzo. It was, after all, the
great event of the day. And what else was there
to do but see the steamer come in from Milazzo ?
Excepting on those gala days when in addition
there was a steamer from Messina en route for
Naples, and the same steamer, half a week
later, from Naples en route for Messina. They
were his pinnaces, he told her playfully, for he
had become ^Eolus, lord of these islands, and
these craft sped to do his bidding. Once or
twice he succeeded in provoking himself out of
his indolence, and he remembered his earlier
curiosity regarding these islands. He declared
that one day or the day after he would charter
one of these steamers, for they were all his own,
so that they might undertake a tour of investi-
gation. From the smaller and nearer islands
they would return the same afternoon. But they
would stay half a week in Stromboli, he would
not have the Stromboli boat upset its routine
for his convenience. Or why not stay on in
Stromboli for a week or two weeks ? The place
evidently intrigued him.

After some time he dropped the idea, if he

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2i6

had ever seriously maintained it, and Judy did
not wholly regret it. Their lodgings in the house
of Donna Francesca in Lipari were far from
luxurious ; but they were clean and quiet. She
gathered that their quarters would be primitive
indeed in Stromboli. She was managing gradually
to adapt herself to this hypnotic routine ; she
was relieved to think she would not need to
dislocate it until the time came at length to
leave the island.

She was happy to think that the arrival of the
steamer could be a matter of such unfailing
interest to him, day by day, long after it had
ceased to excite her. But now and again she
found the steamer a bit of a tyrant. She would
have liked to set off now and again quite early in
the morning, before it became too hot, to the
Monte Sant’ Angelo, where the island heaved
itself up against the sky through banks and bars
of thyme and broom and rock-rose and tree-
heath. There, from under the shade of a wild
fig-tree the mountain would extend her dreaming
limbs till her toes dabbled in the creamy edge
of the sea. She would thrust out her arms across
the blue vacancy till in the palms of one hand and
the other she balanced Filicuri and Stromboli. But
her father did not like her to go until after the
steamer had come in and disembarked its slender
complement of passengers. And then it would be

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217

almost time for lunch. And perhaps in the after-
noon another steamer might be due. One way
and another, her father did not move far from
the harbour-side.

One day it happened he overslept. She feared
he had had a bad night, and decided not to
awaken him. He woke up about five minutes
before the morning steamer was due, as if his
subconscious mind would not allow the signal
moment to go by.

“Judy,” he called out to her. “Are you
there ? ”

“ Yes, daddy.”

“ My watch says it’s five minutes to ten. It’s
not, is it ? ”

“ I think it is,” she called out. “ Didn’t you
sleep well, daddy ? ”

He flung open the door of his room. He had
already struggled into his shirt and trousers.
“ Why the devil didn’t you waken me ? ” he
shouted. “ Get out of my way ! ” His face was
livid with fury. Without tie or coat he hurled him-
self out of the room and out of the house. It was
then she realised for the first time that the morn-
ing excursion to the steamer was not the genial
little hobby she had imagined it to be. It seemed
to her likely that to him, too, that same realisa-
tion had come for the first time.

A couple of hours later, he went up to the little

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2i8

restaurant where they took their lunch, looking
rather crestfallen. He had been back to Donna
Francesca’s for his tie and coat. He had found
some roses somewhere.

“ Here you are, Judy,” he said. “ I thought
these would be nice on the table.”

She smiled. She bent forward and made a
better job of his tie. “ That’s better,” she said.
He smiled back awkwardly.

Then one night it happened that he slipped on
Donna Francesca’s doorstep and sprained his
ankle. The limb swelled monstrously, the pain of
it racked him all night long. Judy was with him
most of the night applying compresses. She gave
him as much aspirin as she dared, but he did not
have a wink of sleep. Next morning at nine-thirty
he asked her to reach him his clothes, and help
him on with them.

“ What on earth for ? ” she asked.

“ You know perfectly well ! ” he snapped.

“ But you can’t go, daddy ! It’s ridiculous ! ”

“ Oh can’t I ? ” He showed his teeth. “ You’ll
just see if I can’t ! Ask Donna Francesca for her
stick. I’ve got my own stick, too ! ”

She tried hard to restrain him, but he would
not be moved. “ All right ! ” she conceded at
length, grimly. She knew that as soon as he had

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219

gone two steps, he would realise he could no more
hobble down to the harbour than fly there. The
sweat poured down his cheeks in thick runnels.
The veins stood out like coarse cord on his fore-
head. “ No ! ” he gasped. “ No ! Help me back
to bed again, Judy ! ”

She got him back to his bed and made as if to
help him out of his clothes. “ Stop a minute ! ” he
bade her. “You could get Salvatore and Cicciu
to carry me down. They could make a chair out
of their hands.”

She looked at him. “ Don’t you see what ideas
it will put into everybody’s head ? No ! It can’t
be done ! ”

He turned his head to the wall. “ All right ! ”
he brought out between his teeth. He refused to
utter a word in reply to anything she said for a
good many minutes. Then at last he spoke again.
“ Go down to the harbour,” he requested, “ and
see who lands from the boat. Make quite sure
nobody slips by you — nobody.”

“ Yes, daddy,” she assured him. “ You ean rely
on me.” She walked down to the harbour swiftly
and reached the waterside in time for the first
boatload of disembarking passengers. She seruti-
nised them as carefully as she had promised she
would, though she did not know what purpose
she could serve by her scrutiny, and which of its
objects was more open to suspicion than the one

220

THE PURSUER

that preceded or followed it. “ But it’s all over,”
she said to herself. “ It’s all over. Where can we
go to now ? There’s nothing but the sea itself, the
bottom of the sea. Would we be safe even there ?
I’m tired. I’d like to try it, anyhow.”

She went back to her father brightly. “ If there
was anybody in that ship who’d make you lose a
minute’s sleep,” she told him, twinkling, “ I’d eat
my hat ... if I had a hat worth eating.”

“ They didn’t notice that you were on the
look-out ? ” he asked anxiously.

“ No, I was awfully casual. I just sat dangling
my legs over the water. Nobody took the least
interest in me.”

“ I want you to go down this afternoon, too.
The Messina boat comes in to-day.”

“ Of course I will. I’ll keep a look-out till
you’re better.”

“ Damn this ankle ! ” he swore. “ Damn this
blasted ankle ! ”

It took him well over a week before he could
hobble down to the harbour-side again. But she
could see from the furtive way he looked left and
right that the island had lost its innocence for
him. He saw an unfamiliar face in the cafe and
at once it produced in him an agony of appre-
hension. He was hardly reassured when he heard
the man break out into a torrent of broad Lipari.
He could not eat his lunch at the restaurant

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221

because a stranger spoke to him, though the
stranger was manifestly the most harmless little
German archaeologist in the world, complete
with sketching-block and camera and measuring
instruments. It was not enough for him to go
down to the harbour-side when the steamers
came in. He would climb up to the citadel and
sit down in the shadow of the wall and look out
to sea for hours, as if he feared some sail might
come up over the horizon that boded no good to
him.

His greatest distress, however, came from the
fact that he feared Judy’s perspicacity was not
to be trusted. She had taken his place at the
harbour-side for more than a week. Was it not
possible that someone had landed whom she had
not noticed ? Her attention had wandered,
perhaps, or she had not been acute enough to
spot him. The pursuer was on the island some-
where now, in some peasant’s or fisherman’s
cottage or over in the village of Canneto where
they handled the pumice-stone. He was biding his
moment, for he had time enough to play with.
It was not easy in Lipari to run away on the spur
of the moment. The pursuer was enjoying the
procrastination. From some unsuspected coign of
vantage he, too, was watching the steamer, but
he was watching to see whom it carried away,
not whom it brought. He was watching to see

222 THE PURjSUER

whether it carried a grey-haired man away, an
Englishman, and the young woman he had with
him. It would carry away on its next voyage
one more passenger who had been thought
to be a commercial traveller, a wandering
scholar, an engineer. But he was none of these
things.

He was paralysed by the dilemma that faced
him. He dared not stay on the island. He dared
not leave. Whichever he did, he was watched,
he was palpable. At length Judy herself put a
cunning idea into his head.

The Lipari dentist was an uncouth amateur
who came over from Milazzo once a week. He
took a room for the day and put up his equipment
between a couple of brass bedsteads. Wace had
had occasion to visit the dentist some weeks ago,
and though he himself had not been in a fit state
to be so sensitive, Judy had sworn that if ever a
dentist became necessary for either of them, she
was absolutely determined that they would go
over to the mainland for him. She had been
horrified by the casual way in which he had
gone on from mouth to mouth with the same
instruments, without worrying about sterilising
them, or even washing them. The little table
between the bedsteads looked like a butcher’s
slab.

One night Wace noticed that Judy put the tips

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of her fingers a little delicately up against her
cheek.

“ Hello,” he asked, “ anything wrong ? ”

“ No, not much. A bit of a hole, I suppose. I’ll
have to get it attended to.”

“ Let me see. What day’s to-morrow ? Wednes-
day. The dentist will be here the day after to-
morrow.”

“ No, thank you,” she said firmly. “ I’d rather
get one of the fishermen to yank it out with a
stone and a bit of fishing-tackle.”

“ One of the fishermen, eh ? ” he asked. “ Oh,
one of the fishermen ! ” His idea had already
taken possession of him. “ Well, go to sleep now,
Judy. Take an aspirin for to-day.”

She went to sleep. The pain wasn’t serious. It
passed off and she was soon sleeping soundly.
She was awakened by her father, tugging at her
shoulder and whispering into her ear.

“Judy, get up ! Get up ! ”

She awoke with a start. “ What is it, daddy,
what is it ? ”

“ Salvatore’s down below. Get up and pack
your things ! I’ve settled with Donna Fran-
cesca ! ”

“ Salvatore ? Which Salvatore ? ”

“ Salvatore with the motor-boat ! ”

“ What on earth’s Salvatore waiting for ? ”

“ It’s a calm night ! The sea’s as flat as glass ! ”

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224

“ What do you want, daddy ? What do you
want me to do ? ”

“ You’re suffering agonies from toothache !
You can’t wait till the day after to-morrow till the
dentist comes from Milazzo ! ”

“ I’m perfectly all right, daddy. Honestly, I
am ! ”

He got hold of her by both shoulders and shook
her fiercely. “You fool ! Don’t you see ? This is
our chance ! He’s sound asleep somewhere !
We’ll steal a march on him ! We can get away
while the whole island’s asleep ! Will you get up
now ? ”

“ I’m very tired, daddy ! ”

“ Oh, Judy, Judy ! ” He got down on one
knee beside her bed, and buried his face in the
counterpane. “ The sea’s worse than the desert,
Judy ! It’s like a prison-wall ! It smiles and sneers
at me the whole day long. I hate the sea ! One
more chance, Judy ! I think now we’ll find a
place. . . . Judy, try and believe me ! I want to
get into a train again. And we’ll get away. And
we’ll find the place. We will, Judy. I promise you
we will ! ”

“ Yes, daddy. I’m getting up now ! ”

“ Oh, you lovely Judy ! ” He threw his arms
around her. His face was wet with tears.

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225

6

Salvatore was informed that the signore and his
daughter were going to buy themselves some
things they needed in Palermo and would return
to Lipari several days later. “ Ebben ! ” said
Salvatore. He bowed courteously to the Ingrisi,
accelerated his motor-boat and chugged away
towards the harbour-mouth. “ Fra pod giorni / ”
he called out to them. “ In a few days ! ” repeated
Wace, and turned his back on the boat, on the
island, on the pursuer who might at that moment
be stirring and yawning in his bed.

“ We’re going to Messina, I suppose ? ” said
Judy.

“ Unless he’d think we’d gone to Messina
because we said we were going to Palermo,” he
speculated.

She shrugged her shoulders. “ There’s no end
to that.”

“ Yes,” he admitted. “ Which then ? Which
way ? ” He stood irresolute, as if the decision
must be reached there, at that moment, at the
harbour-side.

She put her bag down and sat on it. “ You sit
down, too, daddy. We can get a cab when we
want to. Nobody’s listening, daddy. Sit down,
let’s have it out.”

Pp

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226

“ What is it, Judy ? ’* he quivered anxiously.
“ You don’t mind leaving Lipari, do you ? ”

“ No,” she said. “ It was getting on my
nerves.”

“ Well, then.”

“ We’ve got to have it out.”

“ What do you mean ? What do you want me to
do?”

“ We must go somewhere and stay somewhere.
Otherwise I’ll die.”

“What are you saying, Judy? You look so
strange. Are you ill ? ”

“ I know what I’m saying. I’ll die. We must
rest somewhere. If we don’t, you’ll be alone.
It won’t be my fault.”

“ Where ? ” He paused. It was as if he asked
himself the question with an intensity he had not
brought to it before. Slowly, in a voice of utter
mournfulness, he answered the question. “ There
isn’t anywhere.”

She looked into her spirit to see if there was any
reserve of strength she might draw on. It was
dark and empty as a cupboard, where musty
cobwebs hang in the corners like pockets. She
had no word to say.

He opened his lips and spoke again. The voice
was so toneless, so colourless, he sounded almost
like a machine speaking. “ If I were a man,
Judy, I’d send you on from here. You’d find

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227

your way back into the world you came from.
And to-night, when these people had gone to bed,
I’d walk to the edge of the jetty, and one step
further. If I were a man, Judy . . .”

She rose, stung by a sense of his extreme un-
kindness. “ It’s not for this I’ve come with you,
all these months, all this way.” Tears stood in her
eyes. “ Are you coming ? ”

He rose wearily. “ I’m coming, Judy.” He
followed her like a dog. There was a cab waiting.
“ To the station ! ” she ordered. He got up into
the cab after her.

“ And then ? ” he whispered fearfully.

Her cheeks flushed furiously. “ How should I
know ? How the devil should I know ? ”

They arrived at the station. A porter came up
and took the bags down from the place behind
the driver. They descended, then she turned
away, hiding her face from him. He looked at
her as at a stranger. In his utter wretchedness,
in the wretchedness of her bent shoulders and
bowed head, he was no longer father, she was no
longer daughter. She was a shabby woman, with
shoes worn down at the heels, and a hat like a
limp bundle of straw. He bent towards her as a
man might in a caprice bend to a strange woman
in the street, where nature seems too fine for the
shoddy it is dressed in.

“ We’ll go to a big city,” he said. “ You ought

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228

to have some clothes.” He booked for Naples as
if it were a stage on some carefully contrived
journey. He bought clothes for himself, too, as
well as for her, in Naples, and destroyed every
stitch of the clothing they had worn till then. It
was as if he sought to create two new creatures
from crown to heel. He allowed his beard to
grow, too, and took to wearing a pair of dark
spectacles. But he could not change the contrac-
tion and dilation of the valves of his heart, nor
expunge from his ears the rhythmic tread of the
feet that were as audible on the great smooth
promenade as in the narrow alleys where the tall
houses leaned towards each other so closely that
they shut out the blue day.

It was in Naples, in the middle of the second
week after their arrival, that the episode occurred
which gave its final form and aspect to the drama
of Harry Wace. They were staying in a hotel
under the Castel Sant’ Elmo. The house was
scrupulously clean and the streets that flanked it
were less noisy than most streets in Naples. But
it was tall and narrow and there was no lift.
Their rooms were up on the fourth floor, and it
happened one day that Wace, more preoccupied
than usual, went up beyond the fourth floor, to
the fifth floor, and even to the sixth, before it had
occurred to him he had gone high enough. He
went to the end of the passage and opened the

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229

door on the right-hand side, under the impression
he was entering his own room. His eyes were still
misted over with his thoughts and he advanced
several paces into the room, before he realised
that he was not alone. He became aware that
there was a woman in the bed, an old woman.
But before he was aware that she was a woman
or old, he was aware of the happiness that
radiated from her and filled the little room from
the door-jamb to the cornice. Her eyes were
mild and peaceful, her cheeks had the warm
flush of an apple, her hands rested lightly on the
coverlet, a rosary draped around one wrist. On
the wall above her bed were stuck a number of
holy cards with paper lace round their edges.
There was a framed oleograph of the Virgin and
Child on the wall to the left of the window that
faced her, and filled her eyes with sky and sea.

“ I — I — beg your pardon,” he stammered.
“ I thought it was my room.”

She turned her head towards him as if she were
aware of him for the first time when he spoke.

“ Fa niente” she said. “ It matters nothing.”
She looked at him intensely for several seconds.
“ It is a long time since I have seen a strange
face.”

She spoke with the accent of a peasant woman,
but the quality of her voice was fine and gentle.
She wore a small cape of coloured wools round

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230

her shoulders, knitted presumably by herself.
There were balls of wool and needles on a table
beside her.

“ I — I’m so sorry,” he said again. He walked
towards the door, then turned towards her again.
He had had no curiosity about any human
being for a long time, not even about his own
daughter. He found it impossible to restrain the
questions that came to his lips now, regarding
a quiet old woman whose room he had blundered
into, in an obscure hotel in Naples. “ Who are
you, signora ? Are you unwell ? You are happy,
why are you so happy ? ”

“ Am I unwell ? ” She pointed to her limbs
which seemed so slight they hardly made a
curve in the bedclothes. “ I have not moved
from this bed for twenty years. But I am well
enough. I am very happy, signore. Who am I ?
I have almost forgotten that. The world has
forgotten. My son remembers. That is enough
for me.”

“Your son?”

“ He is the padrone of this hotel. He brings me
my food and drink. What more do I need ?
The rest is from God.”

“You have not moved out of this bed for
twenty years ? ”

“ It seems like a day.” The old woman smiled.
Her fingers played with the beads of her rosary.

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231

“ The world has forgotten you ? ”

“ I am happy.”

Scalding tears came to his eyes. He could
not trust himself to speak to her again. He
turned to the door. “ Good-bye, signora ! ” he
brought out.

“ May God be with you ! ” she said.

7

He did not speak to Judy for two or three
days, more than to say good-morning, or would
she pour out for him. She did not force herself
upon him, for she sensed that he was not sulky
or angry. For a time even fear was suspended.
He forbore from looking round if he heard foot-
steps following him and did not peer suspiciously
into a face if it was half-hidden by the brim of
a hat. Something new had entered his mind,
an idea on which it had fastened with energy.
Then at last he spoke to her.

“Judy,” he said. “ It’s not been bad in Naples.
You’ve seen that, haven’t you ? ”

“ Yes,” she said, a little wearily. “ It’s not
been bad.” She knew well enough it was merely
a matter of a day or two, or a week or two,
before Naples was as bad as elsewhere.

“ You’re right,” he said, as if he saw her
thoughts written out before him. “It would

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232

only be a matter of a day or two, a week or
two. I’ve a plan to put before you. I’m going to
disappear. I’m going to disappear from the
world completely.”

“ What ? ” she cried out angrily. “ Is that all
you’ve got to tell me ? Is it fair to bring me in
on it ? What do you want me to do ? ”

“ No, Judy, you don’t understand me. I’m
not going to do away with myself. It may be
that I’m too much of a coward for that. But
it’s not only that. Oh no. After all you’ve been
through, it wouldn’t be fair to you, for one
thing.” She smiled bitterly. “ Don’t smile like
that,” he requested her. “ If I thought you
wanted me to go. I’d go.” She said nothing.
His voice and demeanour were so solemn it was
impossible to attack him with tears or anger.
“ I know you’re ready to carry on,” he continued,
“ and so am I. I’ve said it wouldn’t be fair to
you, if I gave up, and I mean it. . . . And it
wouldn’t be fair to him.” He stopped. His eyes
were full of grey speculation.

“ Him ? ” she asked. “ Who on earth do you
mean ? ”

“ Nothing. Nobody.”

“ What are you talking about, daddy ? ”

“ I’m talking about my plan. If I can still
have your help, it can be carried out.”

“ I’ve not failed till now.”

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233

“ We must go to some great city, I haven’t
thought which. We must enter it by different
times and at different places. You will have
some sort of home there, a place for yourself
alone. Do you understand ? It must be a place
for yourself alone. It should be high up, where
there’ll be air and sunlight. It should not be
overlooked.”

“ What are you driving at ? ”

“ One day I shall come to see you ; not as
myself, of course. Others should be coming at
the same time, shortly after. It wouldn’t be
impossible to work out. We would be tradesmen,
messengers. The others would go. I would stay —
if you’d let me. I’d never go out again.”

“ Daddy,” she whispered. “ You might as
well be dead.”

“Judy, it would be far better to be dead than
to go on like this, hounded from shadow to
shadow.”

“ How could you bear it, daddy ? ”

“ Oh, Judy, if you’d let me, I could be so
happy. I’d be at peace. And you, too, Judy.
You’d know what it was to have a roof over
your head again, and your own chairs and
tables and books to come back to. There’s
nothing else in the world, Judy, nothing else at
all.”

“ You’d never go out again ? ” she repeated

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234

incredulously. Her scalp tightened with the
horror of the thought.

“ To what ? To the following feet ? To the
shadow in the doorway ? Will you, Judy, will
you ? ”

Her head fell on to her bosom. It seemed for
several minutes that she was asleep. Then she
spoke, without lifting her head.

“ We’ll try it, daddy. Of course we’ll try it.”

CHAPTER XV

I

He HAD RECEIVED somc comfort and in-
spiration somewhere, she did not know how or
where. He made plans with a resolution he had
not displayed since the morning of their escape
from London. He took the initiative entirely
into his hands. He seemed to be acting in the
quite conscious realisation that he was making
a final bid for the resolution of his dreadful
problem. He might now at length succeed, and
win for himself a certain measure of serenity ;
or he might fail, and there would be no trying
ever again.

He had strength enough to envisage and
execute a plan, or a series of plans, in which
he was deprived of his daughter’s support over
long days of travelling and far stretches of
country. Once or twice the ordeal was almost
too much for him, and she picked him up again
at the agreed station or hotel on the very point
of collapse. But he won through. They reached
their goal from different points and at different
times. They met and proceeded to bring their

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236

programme to its delicate and dour finale. He
booked a passage on a steamer that went by
Marseilles to Barcelona, but from Marseilles
he returned to Genoa where he joined up
with Judy again, who had gone north by
train. They travelled together as far as Milan,
though he insisted that they should travel in
different compartments. Then once more they
separated. He made for Germany by way of
Strassburg, she by way of Innsbruck and
Munich. So at last they circled round upon
Berlin.

For it was to be in Berlin, he had decided,
that he would seek the constricted theatre of
his experiment. It was necessary that it should
be in one of the major European cities, where
he might disappear soundlessly among its millions
like a stone in a vast lake. Rome and Vienna
were not large enough. They were not excited
enough, he felt, about their own business, their
spreading out into new suburbs, the provision
for themselves of their food and the traffic
to convey it. There was something of the
large village, or the collection of large villages
about them. He had a fear that they would
not be able to suppress an interest in Judy’s
menage ; who was this foreign girl living quite
alone, as they were to think, in a hive of
strangers ?

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237

Paris was large enough and sufficiently in-
different to the stranger who foisted himself
upon her. But Paris was too near the city he
had fled from, and it was by the Paris route
he had fled. No, Berlin was the place. There
was no other place for him than Berlin in all
the Old World, and he did not contemplate
the New. He shied away instinctively from the
thought of a long sea voyage, on which he might
find company so hideously inescapable. The
logic of the situation inevitably drove him upon
Berlin. It was his fatal error not to realise that
if he was to be driven by logic, not he alone
would be so driven. At least the thought did
not present itself to him for several months.

2

They put up at different hotels in Berlin and
met in the evenings at a sequence of prearranged
cafes. After a search that lasted several weeks,
Judy at last found the place she had been looking
for. She took an apartment in a high block of
flats some little distance north of the Lehrter
Bahnhof. The flats looked west over a small
municipal park. Southward was the dark Spree,
northward were the pine-tree tops of the Jung-
fernheide. In between, a network of streets and
roofs made a glistening design in sun and rain.

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238

But it was the municipal park that most delighted
Wace when she brought the news to him. He
rubbed his hands with glee. “ That’s grand ! ”
he exclaimed. “ It means that nothing can be
built to overlook us ! It means we’re free, Judy,
we’re free ! ” He very nearly hugged her in his
excitement. The other occupants of the cafe
thought the pair were taking things a little quickly.
The Herr Auslander had only picked up the
wench five or ten minutes ago.

Judy took the flat in her own name and for
one person. It was unfurnished and she set to
work to get some things together. She had two
divans brought in, not one, and they were
brought in on different days. But if anyone had
noticed it, which seemed unlikely enough in the
first place, it could hardly be a matter for com-
ment that the young woman might want to put
up a friend when she felt like it. She got her bed-
room to rights first, so that there was a room to
keep locked if any porter had something to bring
or any workman any work to do elsewhere in the
flat. A few days later she finished the furnishing
in a sudden spate of activity. At one time there
were four or five men from as many different
establishments in the flat within the same hour,
depositing kitchen material, a small table or two,
a picture or two and certain other objects which
she had overlooked till the last moment. There

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239

were in point of fact five men, not four, who came
up to her flat by the service staircase ; but there
were only four who left, if careful count had been
taken. The fifth wore an apron and a blue-peaked
porter’s cap like the others, but when he came he
went further than they did. He had something to
do or deliver in the young woman’s bedroom.
She opened the door and turned the lock on him.
He did not emerge till that evening when no
more goods or messengers were expected. He
stepped across the small lobby that separated her
bedroom from the living-room of the flat. The
place was flooded with westering sunshine. The
oblong of window consisted of nothing but light
and cloud. A bird’s wing darted across its
diagonal. A tray was laid out on a table she had
wheeled in on castors from the kitchen.

“ Well, daddy,” she said, and smiled at him.
“ Are you ready for a meal ? ”

He bent down and seized her two hands and
kissed them. “Judy ! Judy ! ” he whispered. He
could say no more.

“ Don’t be silly, daddy ! ” she said. “ Come on !
Your eggs will get cold ! ”

3

The months that now followed were happier
than any he had known since his brief, doomed

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240

love-affair with Manolita Bienvenida, years ago.
For a long time it caused no distress in him at all
that though he had feet, the whole compass of
their wanderings was reduced to a few yards,
from room to room and back again to his chair
at the window. The view at that window was
spacious, and the variation of cloud and wind,
sun and moon and star, sufficed during those
months. There were times when it was clear that
his eyes saw nothing, placed as he was in his easy
chair before the parted curtains. It was enough
for him to be sitting in one place, a place he had
won to so arduously and slyly, where there was no
danger that the shadow might fall upon his path
or the sound of the footsteps come up after him.
It was enough for him to sit there, to be there, to
draw breath evenly.

When at night he turned from the parted
curtains he realised with amazement how much
there was for him to do in the sealed and cosy
room. The old woman lying in the bed in Naples
had given him an inkling of how contentedly the
years might go by in a world more desperately
confined even than his, but she had religion to
console her, and he had not. Religion had not
come into his life at all, and the thought had
often enough occurred to him, hiding in the chill
shade of churches not only from the sun’s pur-
suing eye, that God might have been sanctuary

THE PURSUER 24I

even from his enemy, if he had not made his
enemy his god.

There were books and newspapers to read.
They had a gramophone and wireless in the flat,
and Judy played quite prettily on the piano. He
had loved his small garden once — but not half so
passionately as the handful of flowers she brought
in every day or two. They began to collect
etchings, too, at this time. Judy began to spend
quite a lot of time rooting about for etchings in
the second-hand bookshops, which was an occu-
pation that could not awaken in anybody the
slightest suspicion. Why should the young woman
not go rooting about for etchings ? So now and
again she brought back a beauty she had picked
up for a mark or two, and they gloated over it for
hours together.

She went out and did the shopping herself,
instead of having it delivered at the flat. He
became very clever in the kitchen and managed
to turn out little dishes of great delicacy, out of
unconsidered trifles that most people would have
destroyed. It was good fun, in the first place. It
taxed his ingenuity and took up time nicely.
Then it was good policy. The quantity of food
brought into the house was never such that it
might occur to anybody that the catering was for
two persons, not for one. And finally, it was
economical. Living on this scale, they had

O.p

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242

money enough to last them as long as they might
need it.

4

It was about half a year after they had taken
possession of their flat that the evening papers
began to mention a bitter controversy that was
raging in the district council administrating the
area they lived in. The park which the block of
flats looked over had been bought not very long
ago from some private corporation and left to
the people of Berlin in the buyer’s will. When his
affairs came to be examined, however, it was
discovered he was in no position to leave behind
him as a graceful gesture so valuable a property.
He had left a great many creditors who were
clamouring for the realisation of all his assets.
The left-wingers in the council swore that they
would sooner come out into the streets and fight
than let the site be handed over to the business-
men. The right-wingers declared that the sacred
principles of the rights of property and the pay-
ment of debts were involved. The controversy
raged for several months. But at that period in
the history of Berlin the forces of the right were
consolidating their positions all along the front,
in preparation for that smashing attack which was
not long to be delayed now. The right-wingers

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243

in the local council won the day. The site was
handed over to a firm of building prospectors,
and before a few days had passed, the flower-beds
and trees were already uprooted and the footings
for a large block of buildings were being ex-
cavated.

It transpired quite soon that the large block of
buildings was to be a block of flats that would
stare back at the flats that already stood there,
window by window. As the storeys of the new
building climbed up the scaffolding nearer and
nearer to his own eye-level, Harry Wacc glared
at the inexorable scaffolders and hodmen like
those condemned wretches of the Middle Ages
who saw the brick wall growing course by course,
which was to incarcerate them in a living tomb.
But when his daughter said to him : “ Daddy,
if you’re afraid of being overlooked, we’ll go out
of here, we’ll find another place ! ” the idea
seemed dreadful to him.

“ No ! ” he exclaimed. “ They’ll see me go !
I’m all right now. They don’t know I’m here.
But if I once leave this place. I’m lost for ever !
I’ll stay here ! You must get some thicker cur-
tains than these ! They mustn’t see two figures
against the curtains when they’re drawn ! We’ll
have to be careful, that’s all ! I mustn’t sit in
front of the window any more. It’ll be quite
easy, Judy ! You mustn’t worry like that ! ”

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244

She stared at him with eyes full of horror and
pity. He had deprived himself already of almost
all his faculties. Now he announced that he was
going to cut down the circuit of his eyes’ scope
to a few cubic yards of painted grey wall and
whitewashed ceiling. She stared at him as if
he were someone to whom she were not bound by
spoken and unspoken vows, as if she had never
set eyes on him in her life before. How could this
man still find life tolerable when he had hacked
from it almost all its virtue ? What a gnarled
branchless sapless rootless hulk was left to him !
How was it possible that he should prefer to be
the blind stump he was than to throw open that
window and for a few wild whirling seconds at
least, to be one with air and sun, with bird and
wind !

Her imagination crashed suddenly against the
steel-like pavement below, and spread in a ruin
of smashed flesh and bone. The light went out of
her eyes and every vestige of colour from her
face.

“ What’s the matter with you, Judy ? ” he
asked, alarmed.

“ Nothing ! ” she whispered. “ Get me a glass
of water ! I’m faint ! ”

“ Yes, Judy, yes ! ” He carefully hugged the
wall of the living-room till he reached the door.
There were workmen at their level on the

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245

scaffolding opposite. It would never do if they
saw there was not one person, but two persons, in
their flat. Perhaps someone had already given
them an extra mark or two to keep an eye on the
flat and report anything that seemed worth while.

He came back with the glass of water, hugging
the wall again. “ Here you are, Judy ! I wonder
what came over you, all of a sudden ! ”

The respite of delusive content that had been
granted him was revoked now. Yet he managed
to adapt himself even to this disastrous attenu-
ation. The block of flats opposite was occupied
almost before the paint was dry on the wood-
work. To Wace each of its windows was a pair
of eyes which was devoted to the task of discover-
ing whether the young woman lived alone, or
another lived with her, whom she concealed.
Judy tried to convince him that by day it was
quite impossible for any watcher to penetrate
through the lace curtain into the comparative
gloom of the room behind it. She bid him look
across the street into rooms made by their day-
time curtains equally impermeable. But he was
not convinced. He spent a great many more
hours in his bed now, for the window faced a
blank wall. When he emerged into the sitting-
room, he was extremely circumspect in his move-
ments, above all towards night-f<ill, when the

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246

time came to switch the light on. He exacted
an undertaking that she would never press
the switch till she had called out her intention
to do so. He would then move off into a corner
of the room well beyond the possibility of any
espial. Then she would pull down a blind and
draw a pair of thick curtains. Then at last she
was free to let the light flood the room. He, too,
was free to turn his attention to his books or
etchings. Or he might switch the wireless on,
and extend his limbs along the sofa, in a cadav-
erous imitation of well-being.

Slowly the last vestiges of colour left his cheeks.
His face grew dead-white and bulby like a
plant that is grown in the forepart of a cellar,
where hardly any light penetrates. His other
faculties began to lose their edge; hearing and
taste and sight. But he clung to what was left
of them and of himself with a tenacity at once
pathetic and desolate. “ I must keep on and
do my share,” his daughter vowed. She clenched
her fists as she lay in her bed and managed
to keep back her tears. But she knew it was
getting harder day by day. She felt her strength
waning from the tips of her fingers and the
bones of her feet. He, at all events, must not
notice it. She went about the flat with a
fixed smile on her face. Sometimes she would
break into song for his benefit. His ear was

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247

not fine enough to perceive how toneless the
voice was, springing from how forlorn a well
of heartbreak.

CHAPTER XVI

X H E trail led to Berlin, to two blocks of flats
that faced each other, north of the Lehrter
Bahnhof. The young man was aware that one
block was several years older than the other.
He was grateful to the district councillors who
had put up for him so convenient a point of
vantage. If he had picked up the trail earlier,
he would doubtless have been able to rent the
flat immediately opposite the one occupied by
the young Englishwoman. But perhaps it was
better that he hadn’t. He was less conspicuous
in his vigil a couple of storeys higher and a few
windows to the left. He was glad that the entrance
to the new block was not in the same street,
either. He was anxious she should not isolate
him from the hundreds who lived in the flats
and the thousands who moved to and fro across
the Spree bridges ; not, at all events, till the
moment was at last ripe for confrontation.

They had put him off the trail quite cleverly
at Tunis. But he had not been annoyed when he
found they had swung him off on so wide a
detour. There had been several occasions both

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249

before and after Tunis when he might have come
up with them, he thought, if he had troubled
to accelerate the speed of his movements. But
he did not want to move more quickly. It flat-
tered him that he moved with the undeliberate
leisureliness, the unforced insistence, of Death
itself. When the time came to strike, he would
strike. But these thousand minor blows he struck
by not striking too soon — they were sweet and
deadly. He licked his lips as if there were honey
smeared on them.

At Naples again they had tricked him. So far
as Naples they had certainly travelled together.
From that point they had as certainly parted,
if only to join up again, later on the northward
journey. At length the old man had attained
Berlin. The daughter’s trail was fresh and clear
all the way to the block of flats she was now living
in. What had happened to the father ? Had that
been the father she had met from time to time
in one cafe and another ? Had the father ever
turned up in Berlin at all ? If he had ever turned
up in Berlin, where was he now ?

Where was he now ? It had taken time and
patience and the exact deduction of fact from
fact to attain this stage of the pursuit. Neither
luck nor caprice had been on his side. Impelled
by circumstances at a certain stage of their
development, what next step would any normal

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human being have taken ? What step would
he himself have taken ? What step, therefore,
would Harry Wace have taken ? The vast
desert and the small island had given him no
shelter. This city for this reason, that city for
another reason, could not shelter him. His
daughter alone, or he with his daughter, had
chosen Berlin for a hiding-place. Could any
vast city at all, any more than any tiny village,
be the hiding-place ?

The whole history of their relationship in-
dicated that he was not, he could not be, alone.
Was he with her then ? Had he entered her flat,
perhaps while it was being equipped, in the guise
of some other than himself, covered by the
porters and messengers who would have goods to
deliver at that time ? Had he entered her flat
and never come out again ?

Was that where he was now ? Absorbed,
invisible, smiling at the discomfiture of his
enemy ?

He took a flat in the opposite building, over-
looking as closely as possible the flat occupied
by Judy Wace. The father did not seem to be
there. If he was, he limited his movements with
a frantic circumspection. If he was not there,
the chase would begin again, though no clue
offered itself anywhere at all. If he were there,
skulking from wall to wall, cowering in dark

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251

corners till curtains were drawn and lights lit,
how contemptible and how comforting a picture
he made !

It was a bit tough on the girl, perhaps.

Yes, it was a bit tough on the girl. He saw her
leave the building every morning with a shop-
ping bag over her arm. She had as little stuff
as possible delivered by the tradesmen. The
creature seemed not merely hardly a woman,
but hardly human. Her father had made of her
an extension of the functions by which he scuttled
from place to place, and of the functions by
which he now kept himself alive in his funk-
hole — if he were truly there, behind that blank
uninforming wall.

He could almost have brought himself to be
sorry for the girl, if his hatred for the man did
not annihilate every other emotion that came
into its orbit. And if it were not fatuous to
be sorry for a creature so dessicated into mummy-
faced automatism.

Was she alone there ? Was she not alone ?
That must be found out sooner or later. Sooner
rather than later. Supposing the man expired
there, manacled in that prison-cell with fetters
so much weightier than steel ! That would be
sad indeed. It must be found out, whatever
action he himself might then take, or whether,
for a time, he took no action at all. How to find

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252

out then ? There was only one way to follow,
one person to help him. He must go the way
the girl led. She was not wholly a machine. In
some moment of utter weakness, when the strain
was just at the point of breaking her, she would
betray them both, somehow, somewhere.

He determined that sooner or later he would
scrape up an acquaintance with her, though he
knew it would be difficult. If the father was
immured in the flat with her, he had most
certainly given her the most urgent instructions
that she must on no account whatever allow a
stranger to enter into conversation with her. But
the time for that had not yet arrived. He would
follow her, with the inconspicuousness of which
he had become a master. He would see where
she went, what she bought, what she was up to
when she went out into the town.

She went shopping. Never by any chance did
she buy provisions enough to suggest she had
two people to look after, and one of them a man.
She poked about a bit among the second-hand
shops and now and again bought a print or an
engraving. Sometimes she strolled among the
cases of a museum for an hour or so, or saw a
picture through in the afternoon. She was
always back at home in the evenings. If she was

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delayed for some reason, no light was ever
switched on till she was there to switch it. When
an afternoon cinema seemed a little stuffy, she
would go to an open-air beer-garden and take
a cup of coffee or a glass of lemonade.

Her purchases and journeys seemed to take
him nowhere at all. He began to wonder whether
the time had not come for him to attempt to
establish some sort of contact with her. He
wondered how long he could dog her footsteps
in this way without making her aware she was
being followed and studied. It was true he knew
how to modify his appearance by a variety of
slight and effortless changes — but it is impossible
to alter the gait and the set of the shoulders,
excepting very artificially and for brief periods.
He was convinced she must have sensed him
before if her long servitude to her father’s
obsession had not blunted the edge of all her
faculties. More and more she walked about in
a dreamy torpor. If it was true that within those
few square yards of blind wall and blinded
window, he kept her to that unspeakable tread-
mill, he was still more abominable than he had
held him to be. The young man felt his fingers
twitch in the extremity of his loathing.

It was while he was still meditating the best
way to make her aware of him, that he happened
to follow her one afternoon into the beer-garden

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254

at the Zelten, where for the most part soldiers
and servant-girls go. It was a hot day and she
seemed extremely tired. She wanted to sit down
in the shade of a tree and feel a breeze on her
face if any should be stirring there. She wandered
about from table to table forlornly, and finally
found a vacant place in the shade near an open-
air stall where they were frying the savoury
sausages of Thiiringen. He placed himself at a
stall near by and wondered whether here and
now was not the time to approach her. No, I
had best not, he decided. The soldiers had not
come out of the barracks yet, but there was
already quite a lot of winking from table to
table between unattached youths and girls.
(“ A cup of coffee ! ” he heard her order.) It
would be the last word in clumsiness to make
her feel she was being picked up like a housemaid.

A good many minutes elapsed before her
order was attended to. Although he had the
opportunity for the first time, and she inspired
in him a monstrous curiosity, he could not bring
himself to let his eyes rest too long on her face.
He was too fiercely sensitive of the man who
had fathered her for a mist of red fury not to
generate between his eyes and hers.

The waiter she had given her order to came
now. He passed just beside the young man,
and set down a cup of coffee on a table quite

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255

close to him. A number of glasses of beer were
left on his tray and two more cups with a hot
drink in them. The drink in both was cocoa,
not coffee — the waiter had obviously put down
Judy Wace’s coffee at a table where cocoa had
been ordered. He put down one of the two cups
of cocoa on a table en route, then went on with
the other to the Englishwoman’s table.

“ Hello,” the young man said to himself.
“ Here’s my chance. I’ll point out to the waiter
he’s made a mistake, and then ”

But he realised the idea was foolish as soon
as it had presented itself. It really was too slender
a thread to pull at in order to force himself on
a strange young woman’s acquaintance. Besides,
the waiter moved quicker than seemed possible on
such flat feet among such a tangle of tables.
The second cup of cocoa was already steaming
on the table in front of Judy Wace.

For a moment or two she did not seem to
realise it was there. Its odour might have
impressed itself on her, but it was extinguished
in the smells of trodden leaves, cheap powder
and frying Thiiringer. Then, as if she concluded
from the fact that the waiter had been and
gone that he must have set down her coffee
before her, and without lowering her eyes on
to the table, she reached her fingers forward to
find the cup’s handle, found it, then lifted the

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256

cup to her lips. She could hardly have taken
more than a sip of the chocolate, but the stuff
had an immediate and frightening effect on her.
She went quite green with nausea. She was
almost sick then and there.

He looked on dispassionately, with an almost
academic interest. There was certainly nothing
wrong with the cocoa itself. The stout lady
before whom the waiter had set down the other
cup was drinking it with every mark of appreci-
ation. It was quite clear that Judy Wace had a
constitutional intolerance of cocoa, a sort of
phobia. She left a couple of coins on the table,
staggered to her feet, and threaded her way out
of the beer-garden. The young man did not
follow her. He knew there would be no lack of
suitable opportunities whenever he chose to
take them.

One morning about a week after this episode,
he noticed her going into the grocer’s store
where she did her shopping. It occurred to him
to slip in after her, for he had had a sense from
the beginning that he might learn something
from her most worth learning when she was
engaged in some such matter-of-fact occupation.
He heard her order one article of food and
another, such as a young woman living alone

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257

would naturally order for herself— a pound of
sugar, a packet of rice, a packet of macaroni.
She stuffed these things, and some others, away
into her bag. Then she looked again at her
little book. Yes, she had forgotten something.
“ A quarter-kilo of cocoa ! ” she said.

“ Oh indeed ? ” the young man sang to
himself. “ A quarter-kilo of cocoa ? For whom,
little maiden ? Not for yourself, I think ! ” he
gave a brief order and walked out of the shop.

“ Well, now we know ! ” he whispered. “ Look
out, Mr. Wace ! The windows are smashed and
all the doors are open ! Look out, Mr. Wace ! ”

Rp

CHAPTER XVII

I

H ESAwJuDY Wage leave the building that
same day, an hour or so after lunch. There was
nothing to prevent him going up to the flat she
and her father occupied and knocking at the door,
as if he were a canvasser, or had merely mistaken
that door for another. He played with the idea
for a few minutes, for he found it difficult not to
celebrate somehow his delicious discovery. But
he turned it down at last. It was, of course, certain
that Wace would not open the door. He would
be paralysed with fright, which would be agree-
able in itself. And then ... he might either
attempt to get away again, which he might
succeed in doing, or he might not. Or he might
run over to the window and throw himself out
into the street, and that was a finale which the
young man wished to avoid at all costs. It would
be over far too quickly.

No, the way to the old man must be by way of
the daughter. He must somehow get to know the
girl. There is nothing intrinsically suspicious in
the desire a young man on his own might have to
get to know a young girl on her own.

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259

He was aware, as a matter of fact, that he was
not the only young man in the neighbourhood
who had tried to force himself upon her, though
the others had had other motives. It would
certainly not be said she was beautiful, though
there was a certain appeal in her large dark eyes
and her pallor, too, had a sort of beauty. But she
was young and a woman. That had been enough
for them. One or two had been touched by
her loneliness and mystery. They had made
their approach with an awkward delicacy that
might have prevailed on many another young
woman, alone, in a strange city. But she had
fled like a startled deer from the least hint of
approach.

He realised that he could not take the risk of
forcing himself upon her in such a way that if he
failed once, she would recognise him when he
made the effort again. She would be suspicious of
such persistence. How then to win through to
her ? He devised a plan, at length, so sensational
that it was almost laughable, but he knew it
would serve.

She walked quite frequently in the early eve-
ning along the Kronprinzenufer. It was a curi-
ously deserted area at all times of the day for a
promenade so near the centre of the city, but
even if there happened to be more people about
than usual when he brought off his coup, it would

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260

be SO swiftly over, it seemed unlikely there could
be any hitch.

And there was none. The two tough young men
he had employed at a handsome consideration to
be his accomplices, stood leaning over the
parapet, looking into the river. He himself was
stationed in a doorway not far from them on the
opposite side of the road. They had not been
waiting long when the young woman appeared.
They were on the look-out for his signal. He
wiped his forehead with his handkerchief. They
turned round casually to the river again. She
came up along the pavement and as soon as she
was a yard or two from them they turned and
fell upon her. One knocked her down, the other
seized her handbag. In that same moment, the
young man was on them. He let out right and
left and knocked both the footpads down. He
retrieved the handbag, then they were both on
him again. The melee was short and furious, but
he kept the handbag. A moment later the toughs
had taken to their heels. They had disappeared
down a side street.

“ Armes Fraiilein ! ” he cried out. “ Have they
hurt you ? The Schweinehmde ! ”

No ! ” she said faintly. “ No ! Fm all right ! ”
She had not had the strength to lift herself up
from the ground. She was leaning against the
parapet, her face as white as paper.

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261

“ At all events, I have it. Here is your bag ! ”

“ Thank you ! It is most kind of you ! I must go
now ! ” She tried to struggle to her feet, but could
not manage it till he put his arms forward to help
her.

“It has been a great shock ! Come, Fraiilein,
that cellar across the street is a Bierhaus ! You
must have a drink of brandy ! ”

“ No ! No ! ” she insisted. “ I tell you I must
go ! ”

“ I wouldn’t dream of it ! Besides, I need a drop
myself ! ”

“ Oh, of course, of course ! How selfish of me !
Did they hurt you ? I am so sorry ! ”

“ It will pass. It is not myself I’m thinking of.”

“ Please go yourself,” she begged piteously.
“ I must go home ! ” She tried to tear herself
from the support of his arm, but the effort was
too much for her. She collapsed and would have
fallen again had he not seized her. He took the
matter into his own hands and carried her across
the road to the Bierhaus, her feet hardly touching
the ground. He got her down the cellar-steps and
set her down in a deep ingle-bench. “ Brandy,
quick ! ” he ordered. It came. He put a glass to
her lips. “ There, now ! ” he said. “ Feeling a
little better ? ”

“ Yes ! ” she murmured. She did not open her
eyes. She seemed to have gone into a light sleep.

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262

He looked at her intently. She was the daughter
of the creature he hated with a hatred he had not
believed it possible for one human being to enter-
tain towards another. He asked himself did he
hate her, too ; was it possible that, standing so
close to it, she should be excluded from the fierce
heat in which the object of his hatred was
wrapped round ? He realised in the act of asking
the question that he did not hate her, else he
would not have formulated it. It seemed that the
other drew from him every emotion that he was
capable of experiencing towards every human
being and concentrated it into one jet of demon
hatred.

He scrutinised her dispassionately, her heavy
lids, her long lashes, the extreme fatigue at the
corners of her mouth. He had no room in his
charged heart even to be sorry for a frail creature
who had laboured so mightily. Her fatigue, her
loneliness, were all counters to be used in the game
he set himself to play. It was more than probable
he would have to go through the pretence of
loving her. He would do that, too, of course.
He had no sense of shame or chivalry.

At last she opened her eyes. He expected her to
say again she must go at once. But she did not.
The resistance within her had grown flaccid. Her
mind felt curiously dim and weak. It was as if her
limbs had been immersed for hours in warm

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263

water and an indolence had seeped into the very
sockets of her bones. She said nothing for some
time. She looked at him with a fixity that pro-
duced in him a vague discomfort.

“ Who are you ? ” she said at length.

“ I am a student,” he replied. “ I am here in
Berlin studying the History of Art.”

“ You are a foreigner, then ? ”

“ Yes. And you, too, I think ? ”

“ Yes.”

“ Will you have another sip of brandy ? ”

“ No, no, Fm all right now.”

“ Where are you from, if I may ask ? ”

For a brief moment her sense of caution awoke
in her and lifted its head. “ What does he want to
know for ? Why is it his business ? ” Then she
remembered his kindness to her. It was so lovely
to be talking to someone young, only a year or
two older than herself. He would disappear again
into the loud emptiness from which he had
emerged. She had been so lonely, so long.

Besides, it was pretty clear where she came
from. Her accent told that. She thought he had
an English accent, too. “ I’m English,” she said.
“ And you ? ”

“ I’m English, too. But we’ve been living in
Calcutta for a long time.”

“ Oh yes ? Calcutta ? ” she murmured. Then
she seemed to drowse off again for some minutes.

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264

When she opened her eyes again, she reached
for her bag. “ And now I’ve got to go,” she said.
He saw she meant it this time. “ I want to say
again how much I thank you.” She was talking
English now.

“ You must let me see you home,” he said.

“ Oh no. Please no. I can manage.”

“ I insist . . . Miss ... I don’t even know your
name.”

“ Smith,” she told him. “ Mary Smith.”

“ I’m Williams. John Williams. You don’t
imagine. Miss Smith, I could let you go home
alone ? ”

“ Please, I want to. I’d much rather.”

“ But why ? ”

She felt it was dangerous to be so insistent, lest
she should arouse some suspicion in his mind.
“ I’d like to be on my own. I’ve got to go some-
where. Come part of the way with me, if you
like.”

“ All right.” He, too, felt it would be unwise to
insist too much. “ You won’t tell me where you
live ? I’d like to find out if you’re quite all right.”

“ No,” she said fiercely. “ I said I’m all right.’J'

“ I’m sorry. Miss Smith. Very well, then. I’ll
be glad to see you part of the way home, if you’ll
let me.”

She took him across the Moltkebrucke some
distance along Altmoabit. He talked of the latest

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265

films and shows and of the museums. She hardly
answered. She had drawn back into herself again.
“ And now,” she said, reaching out her hand
stiffly, “ I think I’d best say good-bye, Mr.
Williams. I thank you again.” The deadness was
back in her voice again, the eyes were again
remote and impersonal.

“ Good-bye, Miss Smith. Look here, just one
thing. I’m going to keep my eye open for you
again. I hope you won’t mind.”

She turned on her heel. “ Good-bye,” she said
curtly.

2

He realised that he would himself have to be
careful how he approached and left his flat.
She was aware of him now. He must take care
that she did not see him about the place before
he thought the time had come for their second
meeting. But when a few days had passed, he
realised his caution was superfluous. She seemed
to have fallen in upon herself since the episode
of the bag-snatching. It was as if it had made
her realise for the first time how depleted she
was, what a poor shell of a woman her dreadful
task had made her. She moved about to do her
errands heavy-footed and heavy-eyed. He came
up to her about ten days after their first meeting.
He had followed her into the Tiergarten, to

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266

within a short distance of the Kroll Opera House.

“ Oh hello, Miss Smith,” he called out. “ It
is you ! I’ve been hoping to meet you one of
these days ! ”

“ Good-afternoon ! ” she said, and walked on.

“ Oh no, you don’t ! I don’t think it’s at all
kind of you ! ” He came up to her and was
walking by her side.

“ Won’t you go away ? ” she asked. She looked
straight before her. She did not turn her head
as she spoke.

“ Listen, Miss Smith. I’m on my own. And
you are. We’re both English. We ought to do
something about it.”

She made no reply. She moved on for another
twenty or thirty yards. Then she became aware
there was a park bench beside her, at her left
hand. She felt suddenly she would fall if she
did not sit down. She found he was sitting
beside her.

“ You’re not looking a bit well,” he said
severely. “It strikes me you don’t look after
yourself”

She looked down at the gravel beneath her
feet. Her lips trembled a little.

“ What’s the matter ? ” he asked. “ Could I
do something ? I wish you’d let me.”

“ No, nothing,” she replied. “ You can’t do
anything.” She extracted a handkerchief from

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267

her bag as if she was about to lift it to her eyes ;
but she did not. She crumpled it up, tore at
its ends nervously once or twice, then put it in
the bag again.

“ Look here ! ” He bent over towards her
urgently. “ I’m fed up with Buddhas and
Shivas and things ! I’m going to take a day off.
Why don’t you ? Do you know the Nachmittags
Kabarett ? Let’s go along for an hour or two.
It’ll do us both good ! ”

“ I can’t ! ” she complained feebly. “ I can’t ! ”

“ Oh come ! ” He got hold of her arm quite
roughly. “ Why shouldn’t you ? ”

Why shouldn’t she ? Because she was tied hand
and foot, and ear and mouth and eye. Because
she was not a human being any longer, but a
blind function. Because she was dead, she was
not alive any longer.

A sudden gust of profound self-pity seized her.
Tears rose in her eyes and coursed down her
cheeks. He looked at her sharply.

“ Well ? ” he rapped out.

She lowered her head. Her voice was so faint,
he could hardly hear it. “ I’d like to go ! ” she
whispered.

“ Right ! We’ll get a taxi ! ” His voice was as
matter-of-fact as a hotel clerk booking a room.
But triumph beat in his heart like a strong wind.

268

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3

They met each other once or twice a week
at first, then they met every day. She did not
ask herself whether she loved him. He became
as necessary to her as the air she breathed, more
necessary than food or drink, in which she had
long lost all interest.

She had been away one afternoon nearly
three hours. When she came back, her father
seized her by the shoulders. His face was death-
pale in his anxiety and fright. “ Where have you
been ? ” he cried. “ What right have you to be
away all this time ? ”

“ I wanted to be alone.”

“ You wanted to be alone ? Do you think I’m
a fool ? You’ve been with some man ! ”

“ I haven’t ! ”

“ Look me in the face ! You’ve been with
some man ! ”

She was silent.

“ There ! ” he cried hysterically. “ Who is he ?
What’s his name ? ”

“ I’ve been alone ! ”

“ Don’t lie to me ! I forbid you to see him
again ! When you’ve done your shopping, you
must come straight back ! Do you hear ? ”
He shook her, “ Do you hear ? ”

“ I’m tired and ill,” she said. “ If you talk

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269

to me like that, I won’t come back at all. I saw
them take a girl’s body out of the Spree this
morning. She was about my age.”

He removed his hands from her shoulders as
if flames were burning them. He slunk away
towards his bedroom, hugging the wall. He
uttered no word on the subject again that day
or the next day. Then, the day after, he took
her hand in his. “ If he asks you anything, don’t
tell him, will you, Judy darling ? ” he pleaded
tremulously.

She turned her head away. The young man
was her secret, hers alone. She would not share
him. He had no existence for anyone in the
world but her. Everything else but him she had
abandoned.

“ I don’t know what you’re talking about,”
she said.

4

“ I am not in love with her,” said the young
man to himself. “ I shouldn’t see her again,
if I could get at him any other way than through
her. But if there were any room for love inside
me, I should love her. She is beautiful, and she
is dying. There never was any human being as
brave as she is. I mustn’t force her to speak.
She’ll speak to me herself. She’s too weak now

270 THE PURSUER

to be able to bear her secret alone. In a week
or two she’ll tell me. She’ll hardly know what
she’s saying, or that she’s saying anything at
all. But she’ll tell me. She’ll die if she does not.
And when she does — what’ll happen then ? I
don’t know. I don’t know. She mustn’t get in
my way, though she’s dying, though she’s
beautiful. Else I’ll have to kill her, too.”

5

It was in the pine- woods near the Wannsee
she spoke to him at length. For a long time she
lay against his breast, his arm round her. She
did not move. The breath hardly seemed to
enter and leave her lungs. Her cheeks were as
pale as the wood-anemone.

“ John,” she breathed. “ Listen to me ! ”

“ Yes, Mary, I’m listening. I thought you’d
fallen asleep.”

“ I’m not strong enough not to say it. I love
you. No, don’t say anything. I don’t know if
you love me or not. I think you don’t.”

“ Mary ”

“ Please. It’s not about you and me I want
to talk. It’s about someone else and me.”

“ Someone — in Berlin ? ”

“ I’ve got to tell you. If I didn’t love you,
I’d not be able to tell you. But I’d die, I think.”

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“ What are you talking about, Mary ? Are

you ill ? ”

“ Oh yes. But that doesn’t matter. Nothing
can be done about that now ! ”

“ Don’t talk nonsense ! ” There was anger in
his voice. “ What do you mean nothing can be
done now ? You must go to a doctor ! Berlin’s
bad for you ! You must get away ! ”

“ I can’t ! ”

“ Oh can’t you ? And why ? Now listen ”

“ Because of my father ! ”

“ What ? Your father ? What’s he got to do
with it ? ”

" He’s in Berlin ! ”

“ In Berlin ? Is he ? Why didn’t you tell me
before ? ”

“I’m not going to ask you not to tell anyone
in the world what I’m going to tell you now.
But I think you won’t.”

“ What’s all this about, Mary ? Of course I
won’t.”

“ What is it all about, John ? I don’t know.
You won’t believe me. But I tell you I don’t
know. This is as much as I know.”

So she told him what she knew to tell, and he
knew of it little less than she did. When she
finished speaking, she lay in his arms like a dead
creature. He bent down and kissed her on the
lips. “ There was never so brave a girl,” he

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272

murmured, “ in all the world. Or a man so
wicked.”

6

About a fortnight later he determined that the
moment had come for him to act. He must act
for her sake, not his own. For himself, he could
afford to wait.

“ I want you to go and tell your father about
me,” he said. “ Tell him we love each other, you
and I. Tell him that to-morrow I’m coming back
to the flat with you. I’m going to help you look
after him from now on. Do you understand ? We
share it all, from now on.”

“ No, no ! ” she cried, wringing her hands.
“ He’ll go mad with fright ! Not to-morrow !
Not to-morrow ! ”

“ I’m doing it for your sake, not for his.
You’re not going on another day like this. You’re
more than half-dead already.”

“ Not to-morrow ! Not to-morrow,” she moaned.

“ All right. You can break it to him gently.
Next week, if you like.”

7

A few days later she told her father she had
fallen in love with a young English student she

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273

had met in Berlin. She expected him to storm
and rage at her, but he did no such thing. He
turned his head away and sighed.

“ Why did you lie to me then ? ” he asked
quietly.

“ Because I was frightened.”

“ Aren’t you frightened now ? ”

“ No.”

“ Why not ? ”

“ The time has gone by for that.”

“ What do you mean ? ”

“ Don’t you know what I mean ? ”

He remained silent. He did not turn his head.
“ If John weren’t here to share things, I don’t
suppose I’d last out much longer.”

“ To share things ? What do you mean, Judy ? ”
“ I can’t look after you alone, daddy. I must
have his help.”

“ What are you saying ? ” His voiee rose in a
thin wailing. “ What are you saying ? ”

“ He’s going to come here, daddy. I can’t keep
it up without him.”

He threw his head back and suddenly burst out
laughing. His laughter became wilder and wilder.
Tears poured down his cheeks. “ Oh Judy, Judy ! ”
he cried, when he could at last speak at all.
“ How funny you are ! How dreadfully, dread-
fully funny ! Ha ! Ha ! Ha ! ” he began again.
“ Ha ! Ha ! Ha ! ”

Sp

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274

“ You’d best be careful ! ” she said coldly.
“ That window’s open ! You’ll be heard ! ”

The laughter went from his face like a breath
from a mirror. He turned his head round
anxiously. “You don’t think anyone heard, do
you, Judy ? ”

“ Perhaps not.”

“ Close the window, Judy ! No, Judy, don’t !
What does it matter ? You say you’re going to let
him come here, don’t you ? Tear those curtains
off the rings, Judy ! Open the window wider.
Tell them all I’m here, Judy ! Shout, shout, at the
top of your voice ! Say your father’s a murderer !
Say he’s been hiding here all this time ! Say any-
body can come and fetch him now !

“ Well, why don’t you ? Why don’t you, I ask ?
What’s the matter with you, Judy ? Are you
asleep ? Are you dead ? Get up, Judy, get up !
Let him come ! Well, why don’t you get up ? I
tell you I don’t mind if he does come — as soon as
you like ! Ah, there you are, Judy ! That’s better
now ! Did you hear what I said ? I said I don’t
mind if he does come ! I mean — if you’re quite
sure he’s all right, are you ? Just tell me that,
Judy ! Is he all right, Judy ? ”

He stared into her eyes haggardly, waiting for
her to speak. But she felt it was more than she
could do even to breathe yes to him. She turned
her head again.

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275

He got up from her side and left her, muttering
querulously to himself. “ She ought to say he’s all
right. She ought to say that, at least. It’s mean of
her. I never thought she’d turn out like that.”

8

Four days later a young man stood beside Judy
Wace as she turned the key in the lock of her flat.
The woman who lived in the flat on the other
side of the landing chanced to be coming out at
that moment, and the sight astounded her. The
grip of her shopping-basket slid from her fingers,
and she stood there gaping for a full minute.
The door had closed behind the couple before
she had recovered her breath and turned towards
the lift. And only in that moment the further
awareness came to her that the human being with
the Ausldnderin was not only a human being, but
young and a male. She stood and marvelled for
another minute. “ She is flesh and blood, after
all ! ” she muttered to herself. “ Though there is
little indeed of both ! ” So muttering and shaking
her head, she let herself down in the lift.

The door closed behind Judy and her com-
panion. “ Put your hat and coat here, on this
table ! ” murmured Judy. “ This way ! ” There

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276

was a door immediately opposite them. “ I’ll
knock,” whispered Judy, “ though he’s sure to
have heard us.” She knocked gently. There was
no reply. She knocked again, more loudly. There
wzis still no reply. Her heart fluttered with fright.
Had anything happened to him ? Had his nerve
failed him at this last moment ?

She opened the door. Her father sat in his usual
place, in the shadowed corner of the room, to the
right of the window. “ Oh, there you are,
daddy ! ” she said. “ Here’s John ! ”

Her father did not rise. His eyes shone queerly
across the room’s curtained twilight. She turned
to the young man. “ Here’s my father, John !
Come in ! ”

But he still stood on the further side of the
threshold. He stood there swaying slightly. The
whole room swayed towards him and dipped back
again. The blood pulsed in his eyeballs. It
seemed that his finger-nails extended from the
tips of his fingers till they were long and sharp as
a beast’s claws. The fingers stuck out rigidly
before him, towards the throat of his abomina-
tion, seen at last, within reach of the lusting
fingers at last, after such vast journeys and such
consummate patience.

He moved one foot across the threshold. Had
she said no word then and not come closer to him,
he would one moment later have been sped upon

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277

his victim like a stone from a catapult. But her
image arose between his eyes and the eyes of the
hunched evil in the chair, an image of such forti-
tude and sadness, that the tense fingers fell limply
towards the palms of his hands, the red glare went
out of the room.

He came forward. He found it possible even to
take the dank hand that came diffidently towards
him out of the shadow.

“ Poor Mr. Smith,” he murmured. “ It must
have been frightful for you. You can rely on me.”

CHAPTER XVIII

I

The arrangement was that the young man
should come in for an hour or two a day, and
sometimes longer, in the afternoon or evening.
It was understood that he did his studies in the
museum in the morning, and now and again
went to classes or lectures. He brought his note-
books with him. He could quite easily work up
his notes, while Judy was getting on with things
in the kitchen or doing her shopping. He and
Wace often played chess. Wace was happy that
he had somebody besides himself to play chess
with. Judy had tried to learn, but she had never
made much of a job of it.

But it seemed that the young man had come too
late. Judy did not gather strength from his pres-
ence. Because someone was there to share the
tension with her, she herself sagged and fell to
pieces. From day to day she grew visibly frailer.
Her cheeks fell in, her eyes smouldered with
forlorn fires. A tiny dry cough awoke and
wandered about in her chest and throat like a
blind man who cannot find his way out from a
maze of passages.

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279

It was the young man who insisted she must
go to see a doctor. The old man had become deaf
and blind to any ill condition not his own. She
long resisted his importunacy, for she knew what
a doctor would say. But when he threatened he
would bring the doctor there, if she did not go to
him, her father added his nervous entreaties,
and she went.

The doctor was extremely grave. He doubted
whether even now there was anything she might
do to prevent a sudden conflagration. One thing
was certain. She was doomed if she stayed in
Berlin, as surely doomed as any murderer in a
death-cell. If she went southward to the moun-
tains, it was possible she might recover.

She declared that the pronouncement must be
hidden from her father, for it was quite clearly
impossible she should leave him. He pointed out
wryly that when she died, they would not ask her
whether she wanted to stay or go. He himself that
evening told the old man what the doctor had
said. Wace was furious. “ It’s nonsense ! ” he
cried. “ The fellow’s a quack ! He doesn’t know
what he’s talking about ! She ought to go and
see a decent doctor ! ”

She went to another doctor, whose verdict
was at least as grave. “ You will leave for the
mountains in two days,” the young man said
quietly. “ You’ve learned how to move off

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280

from one place to another in less time than
that.”

She was awed and silent. She realised how
futile it was to stand up and beat with such feeble
fists at the strong doom that stood over her.
“ How will I be able to get him away ? ” was all
she asked. “ Do you think they’ll let him stay
somewhere near me ? ”

“You won’t need to get him away,” he said.
“ What do you mean ? ”

“ I’ll take over from you.”

“ What ? But it’s impossible ! You can’t ! You
don’t know what it’s like ! You can’t do it ! ”

“ I think I can manage.”

“ But why — why ? ”

“ For your sake, Mary.”

“John, I tell you you’ve no idea ”

“ Hush, Mary, you mustn’t excite yourself. I’d
already made up my mind, days and days ago.
The very first moment I set eyes on him.”

“ Oh, John, I won’t mind dying now ! I’ll be
thinking of you and it won’t matter at all ! ”
“You mustn’t talk like that ! ” he said sternly.
“You mustn’t think like that ! Do you hear ?
Promise me ! ”

She sobbed quietly for minute upon minute.
He could get no promise from her.

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281

2

The office that looked after the flats was in-
formed that a young countryman of the recent
tenant had taken over the flat from her. The
neighbours on the other side of the landing were
aware of no more than that one solitary had taken
the place of another. The young woman was very
sick. Clearly it was not likely she would come
back again.

He fulfilled the duty he had undertaken with
scrupulous loyalty. He abandoned his pretence of
frequenting the museums and lecture-classes, for
the care of old Wace became more and more
exacting. At first they played a great deal of chess,
but that fell out, for the old man’s wits became
more unsteady as the months went on. He was
hardly aware of it, even when the young man
switched the wireless music on ; he seemed to
sink deeper and deeper into his own thoughts.
Now and again, however, he seemed to regain
some measure of intelligence. He would sit con-
templating his daughter’s lover with an almost
ironic detachment.

“ What are you doing this for, John ? It’s more
than any human being can ask from another.”

“ Even a father from his daughter ? ” the other
asked gently.

“ I don’t know, I don’t know.” The old man

282

THE PURSUER

shook his head dubiously. “ But you haven’t
answered me, John. What are you doing this
for ? ”

“ Because Mary would have died in this room
if I hadn’t done it.”

“ Is it fair to yourself? ”

“ I’m quite happy.”

“ Are you ? ” Wace looked up oddly from
under his pale eyelids.

" Yes, I’m quite happy.”

3

The temptation that had come to him the
moment he had first set eyes on the old man,
came to him only once again. That was when he
came back from the station where he had put
Judy on the south-going train. They were alone,
completely alone. The temptation came and
went. Steadily and dispassionately he regarded
the issue. Here and now he might consummate
the pursuit, or he might postpone the consumma-
tion from month to delicious month. He was, in
fact, happy, infinitely happier than the bemused
old man had any idea of. He decided he would
wait.

The months did not drag for him. The exqui-
siteness of the punishment he was perpetuating

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283

suspended them in a void of crystal hallucina-
tion. The old man was dying. It became the
young man’s devotion and delight to seek to
postpone the release until Death would be denied
not a moment longer.

The day and the hour came at length. The
young man sat by the old man’s bedside, leaning
forward towards him, his lips slightly parted. The
old man was propped on his pillow, with the
shadow about him. The evening light fell full on
the young man’s face.

No word had been spoken for an hour or more.
The old man had not the strength to speak. The
young man’s heart brimmed with the happiness
that transcends speech. A smile came to his
lips.

They looked into each other’s eyes thus for
some time, the young man blissful in his
triumph, the old man troubled by a dim
speculation.

I have seen that smile before. Where have I seen lips
like those smiling that smile before ?

Long ago. Long ago. There was a small
boy running down a street in Doomington.
There was another small boy running after
him. There was a smile on the pursuer’s
face.

The smile of the small boy and the young man
are the same smile. The small boy and the young

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284

man are both the pursuer. He has caught up to
me at length.

Has he caught up to me ? Is it he, or Death,
that has caught up to me ? Is the triumph to
Death or to him ?

The clairvoyance of Death was on the old man.
He spoke, with an access of strength drawn from
some unsuspectable reserve. The other did not
speak in answer. He smiled. The unchanging
smile was answer enough.

“ You are his son ? ”

res.

“ Surely I did something worse than kill him
that you hounded me so ? ”

Tes.

“ What then ? I blinded him ? ”

res.

“ And for that reason I was to lose not
only my eyes, but my touch, my hearing,
all my senses in the tomb where you chained
me ? ”

The smile was like the smile on the lips of
a bronze image, sardonic and amused and
delicate.

“ Does he wish to send his love to me ? ”

res.

“ Tell him I would not have his love even at
the end. Will you ? ”

THE. PURSUER 285

The head of the old man fell to one side. He
was dead.

The young man rose from his chair by the bed-
side. / must go to the mountains soon. Perhaps it will
not be too late.

THE END